


starman

by acastle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Briefly feat. Zayn as Veronica, Implied Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson, M/M, Minor Character Death, Stardust AU, brief Harry Styles/Kendall Jenner, mentions of freddie, mild depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:38:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7211930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acastle/pseuds/acastle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry stares at him for a moment, then Niall sees it dawn upon him, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. “You’re the star! You’re the star? Really?”</p><p><i>Or, Niall is a star (like the ones that shine at night) and Harry isn't a shop boy, who tries to bring him back to his small village as an act to prove his love and devotion</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	starman

**Author's Note:**

> Wondering why this AU hadn't been written yet for these two, such an obvious world for them aha. 
> 
> I don't think you need to be familiar with the film or books to read this. Basically, Niall is a star who's been knocked out of the heavens, and Harry tries to bring him back to show the Devil that he truly loves her. As is usual. 
> 
> Additional notes: Zayn is Michele Pfeiffer, Louis is a modified De Niro, Grimmy is Superman (no, really), and they live sometime in the 18th-19th century in the alternate universe where being gay isn't something people shake their heads at. A better world, maybe, with magic and stars and messed up royal families.

“You’ve got your flowers, have you?”

“Yes, all set,” Harry says, grabbing hold of the small bouquet of white calla lilies as he stops in front of the full length mirror, takes one final look at himself. His hair is short, but he’s known nothing else, piled on top and he’d tried to arrange it in some of quiff with some pomade his father had given him, but the curls don’t allow it to look very neat. He’s got his best church suit on, which isn’t saying much, but it’s what he can do on a shop boy’s salary and he’s proud of it all the same.

“Oh,” his father says as he comes in, takes a look at him. “Calla lilies?”

“A Greek word for beauty,” he says, smiling at himself. “A symbol of purity and marital bliss and true devotion. I asked Mrs. Monday, she had a book on flowers and everything.”

“Don’t think Mrs. Monday’s been to a funeral in quite a bit,” Des deadpans. “And neither have you apparently. People bring these for the dead.”

“What?” Harry snaps his head to look at him, feels his eyes widening. “You're not serious.”

“Oh, Harry,” he sighs, and he stares back at his reflection. He looks petrified, slight sheen on his forehead indicating he's about to break out in a cold sweat. “Oh, don't be so worried, it's just flowers. It's the thought that counts. Here-”

He places a simple hat on his head, one Harry knows is his favorite, and says, “There. Like a proper man.”

“Not quite yet,” he says rather sheepishly, but his father just smiles at him, chuckling quietly as he pats on his shoulders. 

“Well, go get your girl,” he tells him, and Harry breathes deeply, letting out a great big huff as he takes a final look at himself, and nods at his father.

He leaves, and the stars are rather dim tonight, but the oil in the street lamps burn bright and there’s enough light for him to make his way down the small, quiet town of Wall. If he looks hard enough, he can make out the thin line of the stone boundary from which the town gets its name, said to separate this world and the magical world, which he thinks is a great load of shite, but. The sandy dirt of the roads crunch beneath his shoes and everywhere, the charm of the countryside is the same. 

He’s outside her house, and he finds a small stone on the ground, and throws it at her window. It’s quiet enough that he can hear the giggling of several girls, probably her sisters, and hushed, excited whispers of,  _ “It’s him!”  _ She makes her way to windows, two other girls in tow, a great beam on her face, as she opens the window, only for her face to fall slightly when she sees it’s him.

“Kendall,” he greets her, smiling even if she’s not returning the gesture, and her sisters adopt a similar expression. “Kylie, Kim. Good evening.”

“Um, hi, Harry,” she says, and she looks put down, still beautiful all the same, but not pleased in any way to see him. The most exotic beauty in these parts, with her dark hair and tall, lithe frame, thin almond eyes. Certainly no one else that quite looks like her for many towns, no one that has an accent quite like hers or her sisters, either. “Did I leave something at the shop?”

“Oh, um. No,” he replies, and he tries to widen his smile. No change of expression from her. “I just thought, um, to bring you flowers-”

A great swish of metal, and next he looks, all that’s left in his hands are the stems of the bouquet. He looks down at the ground to see the calla lilies scattered in the dirt, and then the tip of a thin, sharp rapier is prodding at his chest, and a voice next to him saying, “Harry Edward Styles.”

He looks, and of course. Nicholas Grimshaw, most eligible bachelor in the whole of town, best at absolutely everything and definitely better at Harry in every way possible. He has a great bouquet of red roses in his hands, no doubt in an attempt to woo Kendall, and judging by the pleased grin on her face as she looks at him, Harry thinks he’s going to get what he wants.

“Nick,” she says from above, twisting a lock of her hair in her fingers flirtatiously, and Harry sighs discretely. 

“Oh, those are. Sweet,” Nick comments on the flowers on the ground. “Nice of you to bring her flowers usually meant for the dead. Really, Styles, are you that much of a simpleton?”

“Nick, be nice,” she says, but it doesn’t sound the least bit genuine. 

“Shop boy by day, peeping Tom by night,” he says, digging his rapier in and Harry gasps, shoving his off and inspecting his chest. “Are there no end to your charms?”

“Shut it, Grimshaw,” he hisses, tries not to get affected by all of it. He shoves at his chest, tries to look much braver than he really feels, throws a smile up at them to show it’s all fine, but Nick just laughs, and Harry doesn’t even see it coming. He stomps at his foot, and Harry groans in pain, before he incapacitates him by stepping firmly at the back of his calf, and Harry goes tumbling to the ground, flat on his back. 

“Oh, sorry,” Nick says, not meaning a word of it, and he looks down at Harry. “Shame, isn’t it? To be good at absolutely nothing?”

“Nick,” Kendall starts, her tone light and feigning authority, but really, she’s grinning from the inside out. “That’s enough.”

Nick just smirks, before he slides back his rapier into his walking stick, and makes his way to the front door of the home.

“Are you alright?” she asks him.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” he says, smiling, toothily up at her, and he watches her and her sisters break and begin giggling again, and she’s shutting the window closed, and turning away. His smile drops, and he a wave of humiliation takes over his body, disappointment filling his limbs as he makes himself stand up.

The thoughts of it keep him up, and he’d overslept. He swears under his breath when he wakes up, and he knows from the brightness of the sun outside that he’s severely late for work at the shop. Throws on some clothes and his hat and barely greets his father, merely answering his query on the previous night with a rushed, “Good, really really good.” A complete lie.

Mr. Monday isn’t at all pleased when he comes in, apologizing profusely and rushes to get his apron on and ready for the day, and the shop’s already so full, and he gets right to assisting a customer as soon as he’s got the straps tied.

“Thought we’d agreed this wouldn’t happen again, Harry,” Mr. Monday says, and Harry turns crimson.

“Yes sir, I apologize,” he says meekly, and he’s getting the small can of treacle for his customer.

It’s barely been a few hours when Kendall comes in, decked in a full dress and a massive skirt in the lightest shade of lilac and a parasol perched on her shoulder, and he’s got a full line in front of him, but she pays no mind to it, goes straight up to the counter and smiles, says, “Hello Harry.”

“Kendall,” he straightens up immediately, and his face contorts into an awkward grin. “I-”

“Pound of sugar, please,” she says immediately, and she casts a sly side glance at the lady he’d been attending to, who looks back appalled.

“Ah, yes,” he says, rushing to get her what she’s asked for, and immediately, he feels Mr. Monday look towards him, and the lady in front gasps when he just stops paying attention to her, but he’s a man in love, and he would do anything for the woman he loves. Wouldn’t ever leaves her waiting.

“Let’s see,” she says, and she lists off a few things for him to get. “A bag of flour, a dozen eggs-”

He hears the frustrated murmurs of the other customers who’d actually waited for their turn, but he doesn’t stop, just gets her everything she needs.

”-Oh, and I am so sorry about last night,” she tells him. “Nick was really rude.”

He just smiles, laughing it off a bit, but she starts speaking again and asks for more things. “I also need a sack of potatoes, and some chocolate, please,” she finishes off with a sweet smile, artifical he knows, but anything for her. 

He leaves the counter to get her the other items placed on the other end of the store, ignoring all the angry looks and whispers aimed at him, and as he walks back, he asks her, “May I perhaps, um, see you tonight?”

She looks at him, slightly surprised, and she says, “No. Oh, but you can walk me home.”

He looks at her blankly for a moment, then asks, “Now?” She nods, smiling again, and he says, “Yes. Yes, I can,” he says, gets all her things for her and gathers them up in his arms, but she doesn’t even wait for him. Goes on ahead out the door and adjusting her parasol daintily as he struggles with everything behind her.

.

He’s not surprised when Mr. Monday fires him, but it makes him disappointed all the same. But, it had gotten him a glorious twenty minutes with Kendall, and it’s a great blow, but he’ll get through.

He looks at himself in the reflection of the pan they’ve got hanging over the stove, a shop boy with no shop and no more apron, and he clears his throat, practices, “Father, I lost my job. No, um. Father, I’m sorry, I - no, no. Father. I’m very deeply sorry to say, I-”

“You lost your job.”

Harry spins, almost loses his footing, and Des is right there, eyebrow arched as he watches him.

“I - I’m sorry. I,” he tries, but Des’ face is blank, and he sighs. “Maybe Mr. Monday was right. Maybe I am deluding myself. I’m not good enough for Kendall.”

“He said that?” he says, looking appalled as he takes a seat by the table. “That’s poppycock.”

“You really want to know how it went last night?” Harry says as he sits across from him, and he goes on when his father prompts him to do so. “Not good. She, and her sisters, don’t know how many they are, they’re so many. They all laughed at me, and she thinks I’m a joke. Come on. I’m wasting my time. I’ll never be like Nick Grimshaw.”

“Harry,” Des says, leaning forward on the table. “Look here. I can tell you that every man I ever envied when I was a boy has led an unremarkable life.”

He sounds so sure of himself, and when he looks at Harry, he knows he means it. He looks down at his hands, still feeling discouraged, but he goes on.

“So you don’t fit in with the popular crowd,” he says, shrugging. “Now, I take that as a very good omen.”

Harry looks at him, and he knows his father means well. It’s just, it’s very hard to feel what he’s saying, with the way his life is going and he honestly has no idea where it could go from here. 

So he tries again. He gets his best suit on and borrows Des’ hat, and he makes his way back to Kendall’s house. Throws another pebble at her window, and waits for her to answer.

When she opens the window, she immediately rolls her eyes. Says in an irritated tone, “Harry, I told you-”

“I know, you told me not to come,” he says quickly, feels his hands go clammy in his nervousness. “I have something for you. A surprise.”

She rolls her eyes again, groaning as she closes the window, and he feels his heart plummet in his chest. He watches her go back into her room, and he breathes, rolling around in his disappointment. 

He sighs, looks up to see if she might come back, but he knows she won’t, and he makes to leave, same old dirt under his feet as he takes the first few steps, but.

“It’s not my birthday for another week, you know,” she says then, coming out of the front door, giving him an exasperated smile as she loops her arm through his, and he’s immediately heartened.

He brings her out to the edge of the wall, several hundred feet away from Paul, the faithful, never-tiring watchguard that stands by the only gap in the entire wall keeping watch every night. He’d set out candles, a blanket for them to sit on, and he’d bought her cheeses, and fresh grapes and figs and strawberries and many more delightful, quite expensive things from the shop.

“I’d never had champagne before,” she says, holding out her glass as he pours her some from the bottle.

“Me neither,” he says, though he thinks it’s because he’s never really had the money to afford something like this, whereas she might have said it because she was still considered underage in her country, and she’d just gotten used to not being able to drink until the next year. Certainly would have no problem buying it for herself, or even have another person buy it for her. Harry realizes he just might be the first person to fall for it.

“Oh my god,” she exclaims after taking her first sip. “This is delicious.”

Harry nods, taking a sip himself, and he agrees immediately, and he watches her consume half the glass very quickly.

“How, how does a shop boy afford all of this?” she asks him, looks at him curiously.

“Oh, but I’m not a shop boy,” he says, and she makes a sound as she’s taking another sip.

“Yeah, oh my god, I heard,” she tells him, completely not understanding what he’d just said. “What are you going to do now?”

“No, I mean,” he says, smiling a bit as he tries to get his wits about him. “I’m not a shop boy. I was just working in a shop. And now I’m not, I’m free to live my life as I wish.”

She breathes, the cold air making their breath fog up, and she looks around at the little picnic setting he’d made. “This must have been all your savings.”

“So?” he says, shrugs it off. She’s not completely wrong. “I can make more. That’s the beauty of it. I never intended to stay in Wall, Kendall. I’m sure your family’s set to go back to where you’d come from.”

She thinks, tilting her head as she finishes off her glass, and he pours out another one for her as she tells him, “I don’t know. Mom hasn’t really decided yet, and we go where she goes.”

“Well,” he says, not expecting that, but he trudges on. “There’s a big world out there, and I’m going to make my fortune.”

“Hmm, now you sound just like Nick,” she says, and Harry tries not to roll his eyes. Nick this, Nick that. “He’s quite a traveler. Do you know he’s going to go all the way to Ipswich just to buy me a ring?”

“Ipswich?” he laughs, can’t help but do so when he thinks that someone as  _ foreign  _ as her would think Ipswich was such a far off place. “Kendall, I’m talking about London, or Paris, or - a ring? Wait, why is he. What kind of ring?”

She looks at him, smirk on her face as she tells him, “Word is he’s planning to propose to me on my birthday.”

“He’s going to,” he tries, but she just raises her eyebrows at him. “And you’re going to say yes?”

“Well, I can’t really say no when he’s gone all the way to Ipswich just for my ring,” she tells him, and he almost feels like he’s being laughed at.

“‘All the way to Ipswich?!’ All the way to Ipswich, my god,” he says, shakes his head. “Kendall, for your hand in marriage, I’d cross oceans, or continents.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he says, puts down his champagne and comes in closer to sit next to her, “For your hand in marriage, I would go to the gold fields of San Francisco, and bring you back your weight in gold. I would,” he says when she starts laughing. “I’d go to Africa and bring you back a diamond as big as your fist. I’d-”

“Oh, you’re funny, Harry,” she says, prodding his nose with her finger, and that really wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for. “But, people like you, and people like me? We’re just not-”

She tries to find the word, looks up at the sky, and she shrugs as she breathes, looking at him, and he sees the pity in her eyes. “Um, I should get going, it’s really late.”

“Well, hold on, then,” he holds out a hand as she makes to get up. “Let’s at least finish the champagne.”

She considers him, then looks at the bottle, and she settles back down, saying, “Okay, for the champagne.”

.

“Ugh, this is really quite pathetic,” Leigh-Anne says, watching as Harry attends to every beck and call of this beautiful, but really very lackluster being. She smooths out her dress, and it shimmers anew, knows that it will help some lost soul down there to see her twinkling down at them, as she always has, for thousands of years. “Ni, I hate being on Wall duty, can’t we switch for once?”

“Stars can’t just move, Leigh,” he snorts at her. “And my watch isn’t very pleasant at all, either. Stormhold’s always in some sort of turmoil. War and death and murder everywhere, much of it from the family that rules over it. Why would you want to switch? I would much prefer the calm and boring.”

“Well, I’ve had my fill of watching these girls just take advantage of dimwitted shop boys,” she says, rolling her eyes when he just gives her all the strawberries, though it was obvious that he’d wanted some of it as well. “Pathetic.”

“Oh,” Niall breathes, and he glows a bit dimmer. “The King is dying.”

Leigh looks at him, and observes what he sees down on the earth below. “At least his sons are there for him,” she remarks. “Four out of seven still alive, that’s better than him, at least. He’d killed-”

_ “‘-All of his 12 brothers before his father, the King had even begun to feel poorly,’”  _ Niall repeats after the King, watching earnestly as he speaks with his four remaining sons. “He really likes hearing himself talk, doesn’t he? Never tires of this story.”

“I don’t know why these royalty types always value ‘cunning’ over something actually decent, like ‘bravery’ or ‘kindness,’” she snorts, and she begins to see why Niall is so tired of having to watch a place like this every night for the last few centuries. 

“Well,” Niall frowns as he goes on watching. “The youngest one just pushed his older brother off the balcony - and, he’s dead. Very dead.”

“My  _ god,”  _ she says, and she’s not shocked, but she’s still very much taken aback. “This family.”

“Well, that means Secundus, Quartus, Quintus and Sextus are dead,” Niall leans back and counts the dead brothers on his fingers as he takes a moment to just stare at the other stars, further beyond him in the skies. “And that leaves, um, Primus, uh-”

“Tersius, and Septimus,” she completes for him, and she frowns as the King laughs at his own son’s death. This family. “And don’t forget their sister.”

“Don’t know if they’ll ever find her, though,” he says, and he looks over to the lively market of Stormhold, where the Princess is trapped, enslaved to a witch.

“I think she’s the only one this old git ever liked,” she comments, and Niall snorts, because it’s true. “Well, there are still three of them left. Only one can be King.”

“What’s happening?” he says, turning back to watch the scene unfold. 

_ “Therefore, we shall resolve the situation in a non-traditional manner,”  _ the King says to his three remaining sons,  and Niall and Leigh-Anne watch as he removes the great necklace with a great stone of deep red, and the color seeps out of it slowly, now colorless and clear. He releases it from his hold, and it floats in the air, and he says,  _ “Only he of royal blood can restore the ruby. And the one of you that does so shall be the new King of Stormhold.” _

He dies as soon as the words leave his lips, and the three brothers stare at the necklace for a moment, before they all dive in to try and grab it, but it flies out of the balcony, out to the skies above.

“Well,” Leigh says, “That should be. Something, to have to watch.”

“They’re going to kill each other,” Niall says solemnly, and he glows even less. “Why must there be so much death, always?”

“These humans, mortals, magic or non-magic,” she says, turning away from the land of Stormhold to go back and keep watch over the nearby Wall. “They never learn. Blood must always be shed to get what they want, or they take advantage of each other and it’s all exhausting. Doesn’t matter what part you’re watching, really-”

“Leigh.”

“I’m just saying, Ni,” she says, “I know you have a soft spot for them, but don’t you get tired?”

“Leigh.”

“I mean, yes, there  _ is  _ love,” she says, “and that makes things a little more tolerable to watch. But it seems like nowadays, none of that seems to matter much.”

“Leigh, the stone,” he cuts her off. “It’s not stopping.”

“What?” she turns back to look, and sure enough, she sees it, much closer than it was before, hurtling towards where they were. “What - Niall, move!”

It comes too late, and it collides with Niall, and an immediate burst of light, much too bright for even her to see, blinds and explodes into a bright, bright blast, and she feels herself get blown off by it.

When she comes to, Niall is gone from the heavens. She looks down, and sees a trail from this massive ball of light, hurtling through the night sky and down towards the earth, and knows exactly just where he’d gone and where he’s going.

.

“Harry, look!” Kendall says, pointing at the sky. “A shooting star! Oh my god, beautiful.”

Harry watches it come down, and it is beautiful, bright and glowing and massive, and he watches the look on her face as she watches it, so happy and adoring. He thinks, says, “More beautiful than a fancy ring from Ipswich?”

She pauses as she takes a sip from her glass, and looks at him curiously. He puts down his glass, and faces her properly. “Kendall, for your hand in marriage, I’d cross the wall and I’d bring you back that fallen star.”

She considers him, then says, “I know I haven’t been here as long as you, but even I know you can’t cross the wall.  _ Nobody  _ crosses the wall, now you’re just being silly-”

“I’m not being silly,” he says, sure of himself. “I’d do it. For you, I’d do anything.”

She looks at him, and looks back up at the sky. “Hmm,” she hums, “My very own star.”

Harry feels his palms sweat, but he waits for her to complete her thought. 

“Well,” she says, holds out her glass, “It seems we have ourselves a deal.”

He grins, and goes to clink his glass to hers, but she reels back, says, “But. You have exactly one week. Just one week, or I’m marrying Nick.”

They clink glasses, and Harry feels his heart race a bit for having been given a chance, in the very least. 

.

Beyond the wall of the small, quiet town, another watches the star fall from the sky, watches as it falls to the earth, and he smiles to himself.

“Well, took long enough,” he says, and he makes his way back to his rather rundown mansion, decaying and had seen its better days, not the only thing to do so. As he walks through the door, he glances at himself in the mirror, something he hadn’t done for several years.

Aged, dried skin, not one ounce of beauty left in his appearance, his hair simply rotting on his head and his eyes sullen and no longer shining as they once was. Old, old, and ugly, no longer the king he used to be. But no matter, because the star should take care of that.

He goes over to his cupboard, his trunks, and. “No more Babylon candles,” he says, frowning, because this just got much more difficult. He recalls using the last one maybe just over 200 years ago or thereabouts. He can’t quite just obtain another, not in this day and age, and he can’t waste anymore time, lest another witch find his star.

“Guess I’ll have to go on foot,” he says to himself, and he takes one of the monkeys from the multitude of cages of animals surrounding him. Looks away, and splits the body open, and looks back down, reads, and the divinations tell him that the star lies 100 miles away.

He reaches over, and points his finger at the box sitting on the vanity, and when he slides it open, the small bit he’d left over  for occasions like this from the last fallen star’s heart shines at him, and he takes it in his hand. He swallows it, and turns to face the full length mirror. Immediately, it takes effect, his skin tightening and smoothing, his rotten hair falling and new luscious, dark, thick hair growing in its place. His body straightens, and he smirks at himself when he looks at the mirror.

“Hello, Z,” he says, looking at himself from every angle. “Missed you. Now, let’s go get that star.”

.

Harry walks down the fields, down to where the gap in the wall lays there, wide open and beckoning him to approach it. 

“Desmond Styles,” Paul says as he approaches, “Not again.”

“It's, uh. It's Harry, actually,” he says. 

“Oh, you do look a bit like your father,” he says, and Harry smiles as he walks up to him. Just as he makes to go to the gap in the wall, though, Paul holds out a great big hand and stops him. “And I suppose you intend to cross the wall as well, do you?”

“Well-”

“Well, you can forget it, go home,” he says, but Harry pauses, thinks back on the words he’d just uttered.

“Cross the wall as well as who?” he asks curiously, and Paul freezes.

“No one, nobody. Nobody crosses the wall, you know that,” he says resolutely, and he pushes Harry back. “Everybody knows that.”

“Yeah,” Harry stammers out, “No, no, I know. I understand. Nobody.”

He takes a step back, and Paul lowers his hand slightly. “Well, um. I better just head for the old homestead, then.”

“Yes, you should,” Paul nods, “right then. Night, Harry.”

“Good night,” Harry says, turning when Paul pats his back, and he stalks off slowly.

“Give my best to your father,” Paul says, and then. Harry turns back, rushes towards the gap, but Paul is too fast. He grabs on to the back of his collar just as he’s running past him, and he reels back and falls to the ground, unprepared.

“Off you go, then,” Paul says, looking down at him, and Harry groans, chooses to ignore the amused grin on his face.

When he makes it back home, he immediately goes to the kitchen, soaks a small towel in cold water and just lays it on his face. He’s had a long day.

“I thought I heard you come in,” his father comes down the staircase in his sleep clothes, “I - hey, what happened? Are you hurt?”

“N-no, I’m fine,” he says, voice muffled under the towel.

“That Nick fellow again?” 

“No,” he says, chuckling a bit despite himself. “Actually, it was Paul? The guard at the wall.”

“Harry, how is that - please, he’s older than  _ me,  _ he can’t just go attacking people. He’s not at an age where he can just do that,” Des says as he takes a seat next to him.

“Well, that’s given him plenty of time to practice then, hasn’t it?”

His father sighs, and scratches the beginnings of a beard on his jaw, asks, “Why, may I ask, were you trying to cross the wall?”

Harry pauses, and he removes the towel from his face, and faces him properly. “I might ask you the same thing.”

Des’ eyes widen, and he clears his throat. “What-”

“Please don’t lie,” Harry says, “I just. I’d like to know. You’ve. You’ve gone to the other side of the wall, have you?”

His father considers him for a moment, and he sighs. “In my youth. Just a bit older than you are, now.”

“And?” Harry prompts, and his father had just gotten much more interesting. He’d always thought him to be the best man he knew, but this is just something of a rebellious sort of streak he’d never even known he’d be capable of.

“I went over to this marketplace, just a ways off from the wall,” he describes, and his eyes glaze over with the memories, and a small smile appears on his face. “Very loud, very crowded. Full of life, something to see in every corner. It was magical, the things they were selling, the people there.”

“‘Magical?’”

“Those legends they keep on telling us about?” Des says, “They’re all true. They exist, right on the other side of this small town. Witches and fantastical things, magic. A whole other kingdom. It was marvelous.”

“And you saw it all?” he says, so astounded and it’s hard to believe. “Just. It all exists?”

“Indeed it does,” he says, a small, sad smile on his face. “And I came across this lovely woman. Beautiful, charming, but the youth of her years, that energy, just drained. I could just see it in her eyes. She was selling these glass flowers, and I was just. Drawn to her.”

“Oh,” Harry says, and his father hadn’t ever really talked about these kinds of things with him, at least, not his own actual experiences. “And?”

“She asked me which one I wanted,” he says. “And their currency, so strange. When I asked her how much it would cost me, ‘The color of my hair,’ she said. Or ‘all of my memories before I turned the age of three.’”

“How does that work?” he says, frowns a little at the thought.

“Well, I don’t quite know,” he says, chuckling. “She ended up selling me this white one, a snowdrop,” he says. “She told me it would bring me luck.”

“Has it?”

“Yes, I daresay it has,” he says, and he looks at Harry. “It brought me you.”

Harry blinks, and he feels very embarrassed for a moment, but his father just chuckles at him, patting his hand on top of the table. “Well, in any case. The flower cost me a kiss.”

“So you kissed her?” Harry asks, just on the verge of scandalized.

“Well, I - yes, yes we did,” he says. Harry makes a face, doesn’t know if he wants to know much more of the details. “And as it turns out, she was a Princess, trapped and enslaved to a witch. She had a chain, magical, tied around her ankle. When I tried to free her, cut the chain off, it just. It repaired itself anew. She told me she’d only be free when the witch dies.”

“That’s not real,” Harry shakes his head, and it’s all very strange and his father is just pulling his leg, making up stories as he goes to have a bit of fun at his son’s expense, and Des just laughs all the more.

“Well, whether or not you believe me,” he says, smiling at Harry, “She’s your mother.”

Harry almost falls off his chair. “What? My, my mother? I have a mother?”

“Yes,” he says, nodding silently. “I, I never saw her again, after that one night in the market, but a little more than nine months after, she’d been forced to give you up. Left you by the wall and dropped you off for me.”

“So,” he says, his mind racing. “I have a  _ mother,  _ I - wait. She, she could still be alive.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Des says quietly, still smiling. “I certainly like to think so.”

He pauses, and Harry takes a moment to absorb everything he’s been told. It’s. A lot, certainly.

“Come,” his father says, standing, and Harry scrambles after him as he makes his way to the stairs, up, up, and they find themselves cramped in the tight spaces of the loft.

Harry waves away a few webs, and sits himself down on a stacks of old books as his father searches around one of the old drawers. 

“Here,” he says, and he hands him a short, rather fine chain, glinting and twinkling even in the little light. 

“The chain you cut,” Harry says, taking it in his hands and stretching it, and it’s stronger than it looks. “Just like you said.”

“And,” he goes on, bringing over a basket, and Harry blinks. “Paul brought you to me, in this basket.”

He breathes, and it’s so small. It’s really very difficult to believe, to come to terms with, that he’d fit in that, once. His father wordlessly brings out something from within the blankets in the basket, a small white flower, and Harry knows exactly what it is.   
“The glass flower she sold to you,” he says, and Des lays it on his palm gently. It feels slightly heavy, but entirely delicate all the same. His mind won't stop racing, and it's so much to take in and understand and he blinks. “So I'm a prince?”

His father laughs, shakes his head fondly at him, and brings out another thing from the basket. It's a thin, short sort of cylinder wrapped in brown paper, tied up with twine. “This was also with you when Paul brought you to me. I’ve never opened it. It’s addressed to you.”

He hands it to him, and Harry stares at it, then back at him, then back down at it. He slowly unties the string, and unfurls the paper, revealing a black, unlit candle. He looks at it briefly, and it’s otherwise unremarkable, hands it over to his father, and then proceeds to read the note which it was wrapped in.

_ “‘My dearest Harry,’”  _ he begins, can’t help but smile.  _ “‘Please know that I only ever wanted the best for you. Had my mistress allowed it, I would have kept you in a heartbeat. My dearest wish is that we will meet someday. The fastest way to travel is by candlelight.’” _

He pauses, and looks at his father, who looks just as confused, but he goes on,  _ “‘To use it, think of me and only me. I will think of you every day, for always.  Your mother.’” _

He smiles, sad, but still a smile all the same, and he looks to his father, who smiles back.  He puts the note back in the basket, and takes back the candle, asks, “Well, do you have a light?”

Des nods, digs into his pocket and brings out a match. Strikes it down on the floor to make a flame, and lights up the candle.

Harry closes his eyes and thinks, and almost immediately, a great surge of light blinds them from where the candle had been lit, and Harry feels the strangest sensation. Burning, but also incredible lightness, as if he were lighter than air, and when the brightness dies a moment later, he’s no longer in the loft.

.

Niall is aching everywhere, and he groans when he tries to move. He’d landed much harder than needed, and when he opens his eyes, looks around as his glow dies down, he sees he’s made a crater of sorts, and he grunts. His left knee aches something awful, twinging and searing and that’ll be a pain to deal with. He makes himself sit up, slowly, and looks down, and his eyes are immediately drawn to the stupid thing that had brought him here.

“Bloody necklace,” he hisses, and the colorless stone glints at him from where it’s sitting on the ground, just a ways off from him. He takes hold of it, and he’d very much like to destroy it, but he knows its importance. He frowns at it, and decides that because it just made his life that much harder, he’s going to make all of these princes’ lives harder as well. He clasps it on around his neck, and it’s awfully gawdy, he doesn’t understand humanity’s taste at times, and he gets up on his feet, mindful of his knee.

He looks about him, and the crater seems much deeper than he’d initially thought, and his mind races. How is he supposed to get out of here? Out of this ditch, out of this bloody planet, back up to the heavens-

He hears this loud surge, and he turns, sees that a bright, blinding ball of light is coming, hurtling towards where he stood, and he doesn’t even get a chance to think to move when someone, someone really very heavy, emerges from the light and knocks them both down to the ground, and he’s really had enough of being knocked off of where he’s supposed to be.

He grunts as his back hits the dirt, and the person lands on top of him, not quite as hard as he had. He looks rather young, couldn’t be more than twenty-two or thereabouts, his hair unfortunately short and even more unfortunately styled, but his eyes are bright and kind, the subtlest green, and he is rather handsome. Defined jaw and handsome features, but he’d also knocked Niall to the ground, so.

“Mother - wait. You’re not my mother,” the bloke says, and Niall feels like his eyes are about of pop out of his head at this idiot. “Unless - I’m sorry, oh my goodness, I must sound so prejudiced, you’re absolutely free to be who you want to be, mother. If you didn’t like who you were then, or-”

“Mate, do you honestly think I really am your mother?” he says, glares up at him. He blinks, and shakes his head slowly. “Well, then. Please get off me, if you please.”

He blinks again, and nods dumbly, and gets off of him, stands slowly. “Well, um. I’m sorry, for. Um. Landing on you. Are you alright? Would you like some help?”

“You can help by leaving me alone!” Niall tells him shortly, and the bloke stands up properly, pouting slightly at the rejection.

“Alright. Sorry,” he says quietly, and he leaves him to it, looking about the crater they’re in. Niall huffs, and sits up. His knee still hurts, but it’s not so much that he can’t make himself stand, hopefully. In theory.

“Oh my god,” he looks up when he hears him mutter to himself, “‘Light the candle and think of me.’ But, I was, I was thinking of my mo - but then. Then, Kendall, and the star, they just popped into my head-”

He goes down to the ground, searching around and above and everywhere and Niall stares at him, and he honestly looks like he’s off his head. “Oh, oh! Excuse me, sir-”

“‘Sir?’” Niall mutters to himself, because surely he doesn’t look that old. He’s still rather young, in terms of star ages. Certainly at least a few thousand years younger than Leigh. 

“This may seem strange,” he says, getting down on his knees as he looks at Niall properly, “but have you seen a fallen star anywhere?”   
Niall scoffs. “You’re funny.”

“No, really, we’re in a crater,” he says, looks around him again. “This must be where it fell.”

“Yeah, this is where it fell,” Niall says lightly, goes along with him. “It is. Or, if you want to be really specific, up there,” he says as he points up to the sky, then down at the gem around his neck, “is where this weird, bloody necklace came out of nowhere and knocked it out of the heavens when it was minding its own business. And over there,” he points over to where he’d been standing just a minute ago, “is where it landed. And right here,” he points down at where he’s still sat on the ground, yelling the last bit, “this is where it got hit by a magical flying moron!”

The bloke stares at him for a moment, then Niall sees it dawn upon him, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. “You’re the star! You’re the star? Really?”

Niall rolls his eyes at him, and the bloke laughs, “Oh, wow. I’m sorry. I had no idea you’d be a-”

Niall just grins at him the fakest he can muster and makes it obvious, and the bloke laughs again, so amused.

“Oh, um,” he says as his chuckles die down slightly, “may I just say in advance that I am so sorry for this-”

“Sorry for what?”

“This,” he says, and he grabs on to Niall’s hand and Niall doesn’t act quickly enough, and in no time he’s got this chain tied around his wrist, and the bloke stands, walks a few feet away with the chain just lengthening magically as he goes. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, this means you have to come with me.”

Niall stares at him, completely appalled, and he just goes on. “See, you’re going to be a birthday gift for Kendall, my true love.”

Niall scoffs again, makes it sound like an amused laugh, “Ah! But of course! Nothing says romance like the gift of a kidnapped, injured person! I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He wraps the chain around his wrist twice, and pulls down sharply, making the bloke very gracefully tumble down to the ground, not expecting the drag. 

They sit there for hours, just staring at each other, until eventually, Niall watches his eyes droop, fighting to keep awake, but ultimately failing when the lateness of the hour gets to him. He lays on his side, chain tightly clasped in his fist, and he falls asleep, leaving Niall to roll his eyes at him and he spends the better part of a few hours trying to find a way to get the chain off his wrist.

He’s tried everything. Sharp rocks on the ground, tried to squeeze his hand, through, biting on it. Pulls on it incessantly and he hears the bloke grunt into consciousness when he pulls too far. 

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he mutters tiredly.

“Not at night,” Niall snorts at him, rolls his eyes because wasn’t that already obvious. “May have escaped your notice, genius, but that’s when stars have rather better things to do.”

He hears him groan, sees him sit up again and give up on sleep, but he goes on just to irritate him, “They’re coming out, shining, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, well, it may have escaped yours, but you’re not in the sky anymore,” he says, and Niall just rolls his eyes again. “Coming out is off the agenda. Shining has been suspended, until further notice. Oh, and sleeping during the day is O-U-T, unless you have some magical ability to sleep while you’re walking.”

Niall wants to scream at him. “Have you not got it into your thick head yet? I’m not walking anywhere!”

“Fine,” he says, stands and dusts off his clothes. “Sit in a crater. I’ve had enough of you anyway.”

“Finally,” Niall mutters to himself, and the bloke just glares at him, frowning. 

“I was going to put you back in the sky once I’d brought you to my Kendall,” he says, and Niall snorts. “But clearly, you’d rather sit on your own in the middle of nowhere forever.”

“And just  _ how  _ were you planning to get me back to the sky?” he says, and he feels like his eyes will roll out of his head, with the amount of rolling they’ve been doing in the past few hours since he’d met this bloke.

“I find the fastest way to travel is by candlelight,” he says, and digs around in his trouser pocket, pulls out a short stub of a candle of black wax, and Niall knows what it is immediately.

“You’ve got a Babylon candle!” he says, and he hasn’t seen one of those in what he thinks is close to a century.

“Yes, I have a bubbling candle,” he repeats, smiling and probably feeling accomplished, and Niall is done for with this idiot.

“A  _ Babylon  _ candle,” he corrects him.

“That’s what I said.”

“You said ‘bubbling,’” he scoffs.

“Anyway!” he says, holds out the short little stub, “I was going to give what’s left of it to you,” 

“Well, that barely has one use left,” he says.

“So,” he says, thinking, “um. Be grateful I’m not using it right now to get us both back to the wall. Unless, unless you have a better way of getting yourself home.”

Niall stares at him, and he stares at the candle, and realizes he really has no better option at the moment. He screams on the inside, so utterly frustrated, but he relents, “Fine! Help me up.”

He hears the bloke kind of laugh in triumph, and come forward to help him stand, “I’m Harry, by the way - Harry Edward Styles.”

He glares at him, sincerely wishing to not divulge his name, but he realizes that’s not very realistic considering the circumstance, and says, “Niall.”

“Here,” he offers his arm, and he sighs to himself, and grabs on to it, wincing as his weight shifts to his left leg. “Oh, your leg-”

“Let’s just get this over with,” he mutters, and he dusts the dirt off of his floaty, silvery clothes. “You’re doing really shit at helping me, mate.”

“O-okay, I’m helping, I’m helping,” he assures, but Niall refuses to touch him anymore than he needs to. He lets go of his arm as soon as he’s on his feet, and he walks a bit away, carefully. “And you are going to have to walk quicker than that. Otherwise, I’ll never get you back to Kendall in a week-”

“Don’t push your luck,” he says, glaring at him, and Harry just grins at him.

.

“Ah, fuck me,” Zayn mutters, looks over the hand of his right arm. All he’d done was use a bit of magic, turn the solitary goat vendor he’d met on the road into another goat to help pull his cart, and instantly, the magic had drained his arm of its youth, turning the skin saggy and wrinkled and full of spots, creasing up his tattoos. 

“Didn’t even use that much,” he says, didn’t quite foresee just how much a measly bit of charm work would take its toll on his youth. The two goats make too much noise as he straps them to the front of his cart, and before he leaves, he takes a small leather pouch from the confines of his coat. Spills the four, small bones fashioned into little rectangles, one side of each etched with a special mark. He throws it into the air, says, “Should I go North?”

They fall easily on to his open palm. His runes land with the markings faced up, telling him,  _ ‘yes.’ _

“North it is,” he says with a satisfied smile, and he packs up, and takes off.

He travels through the countryside, over hills and dirt roads and plenty of greenery, sky bright above him and goats running tirelessly before him, and he feels good, feels much better than he did a few days ago. Must be star’s heart he’d just consumed the night before, but it’s more of the feeling he’ll know he’ll be getting more. Endless youth. 

He finds a middle-aged lady a ways off, her bright yellow caravan trailer parked by the lake where she’s made a bit of a fire, and Zayn can smell the food she’s roasting over it. As he approaches her camp, he sees her mostly red hair, though now white at the roots showing her age, her skin sagging and aged with spots and wrinkles, her clothing seems to have seen its better days. He knows who she is, exactly.

“Who goes there?” she adopts this meek, old voice as she turns her hare over the spit. “What do you want with me, a poor old flower-”

He snorts as he disembarks the cart, and says to her, “Oh, do shut up. I know what you are, and I swear by the ordinances of the fellowship to which we both belong that I mean you no harm this day.” The lady sits up, her expression changing into something knowing, almost sinister, but the look is familiar. Zayn wears the look often himself. “I wish to share your meal.”

She hums, relenting, and the tone of her voice changes as well. Strong, assured of herself, “Well. One can never be too careful. Sit down, I’ll get you a seat.”

She snaps her fingers towards the trailer parked behind her, and Zayn watches as the small blue bird chained up to it transforms into a woman, beautiful and he suspects that she’s not much younger than the witch she’s enslaved to, but she doesn’t look it. Her features youthful and light, hair lusciously brown, but he sees easily that she’s miserable. She takes a stool from the trailer, and sets it on the ground by his feet, says “Anything else?”

“Nope,” she snaps, and with another click of her fingers, she’s turned back into a bird. “Well, what’s it to be? Heads,” she taps her stick at the head of the animal, then to the other side, “or tails?”

“Heads,”  he replies, smiling at her. She returns the gesture, cuts down the ties and sets the roasted animal on top of a block of wood, and with a great big cleaver, slices cleanly down the middle with one great big  _ thwack.  _ Plates up his portion, adds a few potatoes hidden beneath the coals, and hands it to him. He begins eating, and it’s not much on terms of taste, but he’s hungry and he’s never really been quite picky with his food, though the potato is quite tasty. 

“So, stranger,” she says, starting off on the legs of her own share, “where are you headed off to on this fine day?”

Zayn smiles, and he feels giddy with the truth. “I seek a fallen star,” he tells her. “It fell not far from here, and when I find it, I shall take my great knife and cut out its heart where it still lives.” 

He watches the witch’s expression change slowly as the truth dawns upon her, contemplative and almost excited. “And the glory of my youth,” he goes on, but he realizes that he’d told her, told her something he had every intention not to, and he realizes, his words trailing off, “shall be restored.”

“Fallen star?” she says, and he stares down at his food, knows he’d been tricked into divulging the truth. He sniffs around as she goes on, “That’s the best news I’ve had in ages. I could do with losing a few years meself.”

Zayn glares at her, picks up a potato and licks it carefully, as she asks, feigned innocent curiosity, “So whereabouts did you-”

He throws his plate down to the dirt, the plate smashing into little pieces and the food mockingly spoiled up at him, and he’s enraged. “Limbus grass,” he hisses, and he stands, watches her face school into something cool, rather foolishly confident. “You  _ dare  _ to steal truth from my lips by feeding me  _ limbus grass?” _

He feels his blood boil within him, and the skies above follow suit, rumbling with thunder and dark clouds of rain rolling over. “Do you have  _ any  _ idea what a big mistake you’ve made, Ditchwater Sal?”

Her eyes widen, “How do you know my...Who are you?”

“Look again,” he says, and instantly, he his face takes its truest form, eyes darkening impossibly and the white of his eyes gone yellow, dark wrinkles showing his power and fearsomeness. Her eyes widen even more, and her jaw drops and he sees her regret and fear take over her face, her body.

“I shall not seek the star, Your Dark Majesty,” she says, pleads, as she gets down on her knees in reverence and repentance. “I swear it.”

“Seek all you wish,” he says, face returning to its youthful state, and he brings up his left arm, points one finger at her, and utters his enchantment as the magic blows a great gust of wind at her face, blowing her hair out and the winds don’t stop. “You shall not see the star, touch it, smell or hear it.”

More wind, and the caravan shakes on its wheels, the slaved bird flying around wildly as it tries to not get blown off. “You will not perceive it even if it stands before you.”

As soon as he finishes speaking, he feels the power just drain out of him, a physical pull almost, and when he looks down at his arm, it matches the other one in its decayed, aged physical appearance, spots and warts and veins and all, and he huffs, rolls his eyes in frustration. He looks down, and the witch looks confused, looks about herself in a daze, and he knows the enchantment’s done its work. 

“Pray you never meet me again, Ditchwater Sal,” he tells her, and he embarks his cart, and is off before she really comes to.

.

Harry discovers that stars are the worst traveling companion, case study of one. He doesn’t want to blame their snail pace on Niall, because his knee was injured, but they were just. Going so, so,  _ so, slowly,  _ when he really couldn’t afford to be.

They’d passed through hills, cliffs, and they were currently in a forest, and all that time, Niall would not stop complaining. Well, actually, not quite. He never really talked until Harry spoke first, but he’d always go off on him, call him an idiot or moron or the like and  _ “What is it about this girl anyway? With a name like Candle? She can’t be all that great-”  _ and it was all very disrespectful to his love. 

“Are you sure you’re even going the right way?” Niall asks tiredly, sun shining bright above them and it’s rather warm today. Harry had even removed his coat, humming as he ties the chain another time around his wrist and smiling at the skies.

“Yes, I. I’m quite sure. I think so,” he replies, looks around at the trees, wonders if they’ve got some sort of magical property as well. He can never be too sure.

“You think so?”

“Yes.”

“How?!”

“I just do.”

“Okay,” he laughs humorlessly, “Let me get this straight. You think you know we’re going the right way because, and I quote,  _ ‘I just do?’” _

“I do though,” he talks over him, hears Niall snort behind him, but he trudges on. “I don’t know why.”

“That’s comforting,” he snides.

“Maybe it’s my love for Kendall, guiding me home,” he says in all seriousness, but Niall just laughs again, yelling about how they’re doomed and he’s  _ ‘stuck with the biggest moron on this planet.’  _ “Nile, whether you like it or not-”

_ “Ni-all,”  _ he repeats for the nth time today, and Harry rolls his eyes. “My name is Niall, please don’t mispronounce it, just-”

“Right,” Harry says under his breath, walks a bit faster and pulling on the chain behind him.

“Ow,  _ ow,”  _ Niall says, and Harry looks back, sees him touching his knee gingerly. “Would you - would you please  _ slow down?” _

“Yes, I’m sorry,” he says, and he is, but he’d really like to get a move on. “Look, we’re going north, alright? The wall’s north. And if you look up in the sky, even during the day,” he says, cranes his neck to look up, searches for that one bright light he can always count on. “You can see the - the evening star,” he pauses, because. It’s gone, nowhere he can see up there. “That’s, that’s so weird.”

“That’s funny,” Niall hisses, smiling venomously at him as he stands, goes over to a nearby tree. “Hilarious. My sides are splitting.”

“No, I’m being,” Harry tries to say, but then he realizes. “Wait. Wait, that was you? That was you! Really?”

Niall just scowls at him, before he gets down to the ground, leans back on the wide trunk of the tree, and no, no, no, he’s not supposed to do this, Harry thinks.

“What, what are you doing?” he asks, though it’s quite clear.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Niall says, sweeping his bright blonde hair off his face, off to the side in a soft quiff. “I’m sitting down, I’m tired.”

He’s very handsome, Harry knows this, acknowledges it. Thought so since the moment he’d landed on top of him, though that had been strange for a moment as he’d thought he was his mother, even just for a flash of an instant. Bright blue eyes and pale skin, and sometimes, he’d sworn Niall was actually glowing very dimly. A beautiful sort of softness, but also a lithe, defined body under the floaty material of his coverings. But he’s been a pain in his arse, and he knows technically he’d been the one to kidnap him and everything, sort of, but still. This could be over much quicker if he’d just stop yelling at him so much.

“Please don’t do this again,” Harry says, tries to sound firm but he’s not quite sure if he really succeeds. “We agreed we’d stop off at the next village to eat and rest.”

“Come on, Harry,” Niall says, and it looks like all the light, metaphorical and physical, as it seems, had just gone out of him. He looks tired, exhausted, and he’s pleading, and Harry feels awful already. “It’s midday. I never stay up this late. Just, please. Let me sleep.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, relents, “Well, then. I’ll, um. You, you sleep. I’ll go and get us something to eat.”

He makes to leave, but remembers. Turns back to wrap the chain around the tree trunk, and Niall asks, “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he says, linking the open ends together and instantly, they come together seamlessly, magically, like they were never cut to begin with. “I’m making sure you don’t run away.”

Niall frowns at him, and rolls his eyes and huffs as he tries to get comfortable on the ground, and Harry checks one last time to make sure he’s chained up properly before he leaves.

.

Niall had a rough start, but he manages to get a few hours of rest. When he wakes, sky’s already fallen, dark and the forest isn’t much better, dark and ominous everywhere. He looks up at the heavens, and he yearns to be back up there again, arguing with Leigh over who gets to watch what, shining down below. He’s found it impossible to do that here. Couldn’t shine even if he wanted to. He’s got no reason, nothing to shine for, and he’s just not. Happy.

_ ‘Kendall this,’  _ and  _ ‘Kendall that,’  _ is all he’s heard since he’s gotten here, and he’s rather sick of her already though they hadn’t even met yet. And Harry, he’s a fit bloke, seems kind enough, definitely got his own sort of awkward charm. But he’s a moron before anything else, and Niall really cannot wait to get that candle and just. Disappear.

He leans back on the trunk, not quite the most comfortable spot, but it’s allowed him a respite and he’s quite thankful for it all the same. Then, just his luck, as he hears the rustling of leaves and a crunch on the ground, and he knows it can’t simply just be the wind. 

“Harry?” he calls out, maybe a little foolishly, but it’s not like he can do much else.  Another rustle of the leaves and it makes him flinch, makes him look about to see what it might be. “Who’s there?” he says, and it’s much too eerie around him and he decides he doesn’t like the woods much at all. 

He can feel, just  _ feel,  _ that he’s being watched, and he’s not alone, and he calls out nervously, “Harry, is that you? It’s not funny.” He tries to laugh it off, but he knows he’s not doing a very good job of it, and he has the briefest flash of pure, genuine fear in his heart. He knows stars aren’t safe on earth, too many want them for their own gain, and he knows all the stories. Knows every brother and sister he’s lost these many years since he’d exploded and come into existence, and he thinks that maybe, he might just join them. 

What a way to go. Chained to a tree by a moronic, blinded by ‘love’ idiot, left for dead.

“Harry!” he calls out one last time, and the leaves rustle again, and when he looks, he sees he’s truly not alone, but he’s in no danger.

A unicorn, pristinely white and a golden horn on its head approaches him, trotting along gracefully and it almost shines with how purely white it is, and Niall is immediately calmed, heartened. 

He sighs in relief as it comes towards him, and it bows its head to him, nuzzling its nose on his palm when he reaches out. He smiles at it, and it looks at him briefly, then bows its head again, and strikes its horn against the chain, and it disintegrates into nothing, and Niall is freed. 

“Oh, oh thank you,” he breathes, and he tries to stand, his knee still rather weak, but he manages. The unicorn lowers down to the ground, folding its legs and allows him to mount it carefully, and once he’s safely on, it stands again, and Niall holds on to its neck as it trots along.

.

Harry had walked hours,  _ hours, _ for a warm meal and a few loaves of bread for Niall, and it’s honestly typical, really hilariously predictable, that when he gets back to the spot he’s sure he had left him in, he’s no longer there.

“Niall?” he calls out as he walks up to the tree, the right tree he’s sure, but there’s no sign of him ever even being there. Not even the chain left. “Niall?”

When no one, nothing, replies, he groans to himself, mutters, “Oh, you idiot.” he throws the food down to the ground in frustration, really rather foolish of him to do so, but he’s angry at himself and he thinks it still might be a bit edible should he get hungry later on. He drops down to the spot where Niall had been, and it’s cold, and he knows enough that he’s been gone for quite some time, and he just berates himself even more.He looks up at the sky, and the stars seem to be shining a bit less, the full moon not as bright as he knows, and he thinks it’s the forest. Doesn’t know how stars work, really, but he doubts that just because one of them’s down here, or. 

He tires from thinking so much, and from the long journey back and forth, and the trunk gets much more comfortable than it should be, and he falls asleep without meaning to, hugging himself for warmth.

He must sleep deeper than he usually does, because a voice drifts through his head. Not like a dream, but as if they were speaking to him, feeding their words into his mind with no way fro him to avoid it. 

_ “Harry?”  _ the voice, a woman, says softly, her voice floaty and otherworldly, and he keeps his eyes closed, knows he’s still asleep, but the sensation is the strangest he’s ever felt.  _ “Please protect our brother, Harry. Niall is in grave danger. The unicorn came to help her, but now they’re heading into a trap.” _

Harry stirs, and he feels a chill just wash over him, the feeling taking over his whole body, and his chest hollows at the thought of Niall being in danger, even if he’s given Harry nothing but trouble since he’d met him.

_ “No star is safe in Stormhold,”  _ she tells him, and he doesn’t know what Stormhold is, assumes it must be what they call this side of the wall, but a vision explodes before his closed eyes, a great light in the sky exploding, eclipsing. And it comes hurtling to the ground, and he realizes that it’s a star, shooting down to earth. 

_ “The last to fall, thousands of years ago, even before Niall was created in the sky,”  _ the voice continues, and the bright is blinding for a moment, and then it dissipates, until he sees the star on the ground, beautiful, long, honey blonde hair fanned out on the ground, her blue eyes shining and her smile absolutely glowing.  _ ‘Perrie. She was captured by the same witch who seeks Niall now.” _

A memory, Harry realizes, and he watches as the star is helped up by a rather handsome young man, olive skinned and dark, dark hair, even darker eyes, and a carefully angled, chiseled face. 

_ “His name is Zayn. He tricked her, cared for her,”  _ she says, and she shows him. The young man, the witch, he cares for Perrie and feeds her, spoils her, and Harry even sees that he might have shown her a bit of love, and he sees that the star falls for it, fooled.  _ “And when her heart was once more aglow,”  _ the witch guides Perrie onto a large table, and he smiles down at her, stroking her face gently and she smiles back, skin shining and the light emanating from her brightly. Harry’s heart drops to his stomach as he watches the witch’s smile turn into a smirk, and suddenly. Raises his arm, a great glass knife, horribly sharp, in his hand, and.  _ “He cut it from her chest, and ate it.” _

He shakes his head, doesn’t want to see any more, but he hears her scream, loud, loud, and then nothing at all. He wakes in a cold sweat, his heart thumping hard in his chest, and he feels it disappear altogether when he realizes. That will be Niall if he does nothing. 

_ “There’s no time to waste,”  _ he hears, the star above still speaking to im, and he looks up to the sky.  _ “A coach is coming. By any means possible, you must get on it. Run.” _

He scrambles up to his feet, and the flowy voice leaves his head, and he hears the telltale signs of several horses galloping quickly from a distance. He looks around, sees on the other side of the wood that she had been right; a coach, a rather large one, pulled by four black horses runs through the wood, the driver perched on the seat looking regal and in a hurry, and Harry doesn’t think. Just runs, runs towards it, and the plan had been to jump on, grab on to the door or side or something and just hold on, and he’d felt rather heroic, brave, as he was running faster than he’d ever run before, thinks it’s the wind whistling in his ears though he thinks it just might be his heart with how much he was exerting.

Of course, when he jumps on, tries to at least, he’d failed miserably, hands too sweaty as he’d tried to latch on to the roof of the coach, and he’d slammed right off, landed on the hard ground with a miserable grunt.

He hears the coach come to a stop, and he’s barely come to when the driver comes toward him, sword out and pointed at his chest as he looks down at Harry. He’s rather old, Harry can tell he’s at least older than his father, but he holds himself with an important sort of air. 

‘If Septimus insists on sending a boy to do a man’s job,” he says, and Harry just holds his hands out in surrender even though he’s got no clue on who ‘Septimus’ is supposed to be. 

“No, no, no, wait, please!” he says, “I don’t know a Septimus. I just need a lift.”

The man looks at him with an arched eyebrow, dubious, but Harry just spreads his arms a bit, “Look at me - look at me, I’m unarmed. Please. Please, let me ride with you.”

He sighs, and slides the sword back into its sheath, and stares down at him as he says, “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m on a quest of enormous importance.”

He walks off, and Harry rolls over, gets up on his feet and scurries after him, “Well, um. All the more reason to take me with you. There, there may come a time when you need a second pair of hands.”

He watches him get up on the seat, and Harry pleads with him. “Sir, please. Maybe providence sent me to you just as it sent you to me.”

At that, the man pauses, and he considers him for a moment, before sighing. “Get on.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you,” he jumps on, rather clumsily but he still manages to do it in one try, and the man slides over to let him on.

“Your name, then?” he asks.

“Harry, Sir,” he replies, and the man nods to him.

“Primus, first son of the King, Prince of Stormhold,” he says in turn, and Harry’s eyes widen and his jaw drops, but he’s allowed to opportunity to ask him much more as he takes the reigns, and the horses resume their galloping. 

.

“I mean,” Niall hasn’t quite stopped talking to the unicorn, even though it can’t quite reply, but it has been, as of the moment, been a much more satisfactory traveling companion than Harry. He feels it eat away at his chest, that he’s not keeping up his end of the bargain, and Harry was sweet and surprisingly considerate, but he had been kidnapped, after all. He tries to reason with the unicorn, though he knows he’s really just trying to convince himself. 

“Who’s to say he’d have even kept his promise about the candle?” he muses aloud as they make their way through the wood. “I just refuse to believe he’s the only person in Stormhold who could’ve helped me.”

The forest is quiet around them, and he continues. “Going on and on and on. Won’t shut up about that girl, just sounds like a spoiled brat, if you ask me.”

The unicorn neighs a bit, and he sighs as they finally seem to make it out of the woods, and they continue on the dirt roads, abandoned and it’s dark, he knows no one should be out at this hour, and it does him fine, likes the dark anyway. 

He and the unicorn go down the roads for what feels like a few hours, but the skies overhead rumble and when he looks up, his fellow stars and the moon alike are all hidden from view, behind clouds of dark gray, and rain begins pouring down.

He and the unicorn are soaked to the bone within minutes, and his teeth chatter and he rubs his arms uselessly for warmth, on and on until he just. He blinks one moment, and the next, he sees a small inn, a solitary structure in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and the windows glow warmly from what he sees, smoke coming out of the chimney telling him a fire roars inside, and he stares at it, completely transfixed. 

He guides the unicorn towards it, glances at the signpost, and there's no name. Rather, a painting of a cart signifies the spot, and he stares at it for a moment, before the cold and wet get to him and he has to find a way to get warm.

He disembarks, and limos towards the front door, and tries to look through the glass. Knocks thrice, and he sees this woman come towards the door, beautiful and her skin rich like olives, dark eyes and dark, luscious long hair, her face angled and beautifully shaped. 

“Oh,” she gasps when she opens the door, “Goodness me, my dear. Come on out of this wretched rain!”

She beckons him inside, and he feels warmth just consume him, and he feels instantly better. “We have food and drink,” the woman says, guiding him along, “a warm bed, and plenty of hot water for a bath.”

Niall feels his eyes close at the mention of everything, so desperately wanted and needed after these past few days, and he feels instantly better once he's inside.

“I'm Veronica, the innkeeper,” she introduces herself, smiling, “my daughter,” she points to a red headed lass with large eyes who can't stop staring at her chest, as if she were new to them, and Niall blinks, but chooses not to question. “And my husband, Billy,” she says, pointing to a man behind the bar counter, tall, but his limbs stuck close to his body, as if he has no really idea on how to use them. His hair, with little tufts on each side resembling, funnily, like small horns, is colored white, the goatee as well, and his eyes bug out. Probably the most curious of all, Niall notes that he's chewing on a towel. 

“How do you like your bath?” Veronica asks him, tending to a pot over the fireplace. “Warm, hot, or boil-a-lobster?”

“Oh, uh,” he says shyly. “I honestly don't know.”

“Then let me choose for you,” she replies kindly, “and I'll have my husband take your horse to the stable. Billy?”

The towel-chewing man snaps his head towards them as he's called, and he spits out the towel and jumps, straight up on to the counter rather stiffly, and Niall stares, not sure of what to think. He looks back to Veronica, sees her face trying not to flinch or wince or show any sign of embarrassment, and Billy leaves, walking strangely out the door. 

She breathes deeply, and looks back at animal with that same, strange smile, tells him, “Now, let's get you out of your wet things, shall we?”

He nods, not quite sure how to respond, but she leaves, nodding to her daughter, who frowns, but says nothing otherwise. Directs Niall to the changing room and hands him a fluffy white bathrobe to change into.  

He strips down, removes everything but the necklace, and when he comes back out, the bath is warm and ready for him in the copper-colored claw footed bathtub, and he salivates at the sight of it. Disrobes, and climbs in carefully, and the warmth of the water soothes him instantly.

“Feeling better?” Veronica comes in a bit later, smile still on her face, and she perches herself at the foot of the tub, which is. Well, the water’s good, and Niall knows not to complain when they've been so helpful and so hospitable and he feels miles, miles better. 

“Much, thank you,” he replies, smiles in return, and he means it. “The wake water’s actually done me a world of good.”

“You see?” she says, “the powers of a nice, hot bath.”

He smiles, and he leans back, letting the water comfort him, and Veronica asks him, “I noticed you were limping earlier. Your leg? Any improvement?”

All of a sudden, Niall feels his knee just. Heal, magically, almost, as if the pain and the stress had just seeped out of his body, and he stares down, marveled. “That - That is extraordinary.”

“It's the very least I could do. I'm just glad you're feeling better,” she says, and Niall just breathes it all in, feeling the contentment and the satisfaction and his heart feels full with it. “You seem happier yourself, too.”

“I do feel happier,” he tells her, a lazy smile spreading in his face, and he knows he's glowing a bit. “Less troubled.”

She smiles, “Wonderful. Nothing like a nice soak to warm the cockles of your heart.”

He lies in a it more, and she stands, smiling again towards her daughter, who rolls her eyes and holds out a towel for him, desperately trying not to look at him, and Niall frowns a bit, he's the one feeling weird here, but he thanks her all the same, but she just rolls her eyes again. 

He puts on the robe again, and Veronica guides her to the upstairs, and unlocks a door to a spacious, warmly lit room, and the bed looking as soft as a cloud. He should know, as he's stared down at clouds for all his life. 

“Now,” Veronica says, pulling back the covers of the bed, “I'm only a simple innkeeper’s wife, but I've been told I have a healer’s hands.”

She smiles at him again, and he just smiles back, feeling too good and glowing too brightly to do much else. “I'd be glad to give you a massage,” she tells him. 

“What's a massage?” he asks, and she looks at him, surprised and astounded that he doesn't know what it is. 

“Never had, oh,” she says, laughs softly in amusement, “well, bless my soul. Nothing like a massage to send you off to the finest and deepest night’s sleep.”

“Oh,  I do have trouble sleeping at night,” he tells her, and she shakes her head, tuts at him in pity. 

“Lie on your back, love,” she says, and he lies back, eyes closing at the softness of the bed. “Why not close your eyes?” You'll drift off better that way,” she advises him, and he nods, does as he's told and he feels himself shining more and more. 

She opens up the flaps of the robe slightly, just reveals his chest a bit more, and he waits, waits, and just as he thinks they're about to begin, he hears the faint, but definitely present, knocking, hammering on the front door, heard even as far away as they are from it. 

He can't make out the words, but someone is most definitely yelling for some assistance, and Niall blinks his eyes open, wondering why she's not helping them. 

“Shouldn't you, um. Get that?” he asks her. 

“Oh, but that would be rude, in attending to you,” she says sweetly. 

“No, that's alright. I can wait,” he says, and she opens her mouth, as if to say something, but he stares at her hard. He's not quite sure, but he thinks he hears her huff, before schooling her face into another smile and saying. “Of course. I'll be right with you, I'll just attend to this customer.”

He nods, smiling at her, and she leaves reluctantly, and Niall stares after her, and this  _ is  _ the first inn he’s ever been to, what should he know about proper decorum and whatnot, but he’s quite sure that innkeepers and their staff should be more. More welcoming of others, as well, he supposes, but then again, maybe it varies from place to place. He knows plenty about this world, but doesn’t know much, much more.

He feels his glow diminish, dim until he’s no longer shining, and he closes his eyes, tries to sleep, though it prove to be unsuccessful. He gets up, sighs as he pulls the robe closer to his body, and walks out of the room to do a bit of exploring.

.

“Hello!” Primus bangs on the door of the inn, and Harry bounces on his feet, rubs his hands and tries to keep warm but he’s soaked to the bone. He distracts himself by trying to tend to the horses, but they’re so well-trained that they seem to judge him, more than anything else. 

“Service!” he knocks again, louder, and the thunder booms above them, and it rains even more.

“Maybe we should carry on and try the next inn!” Harry says, even though it’s severely clear to both of them that this seems to be the only one for miles. “Especially if this stone you keep going on about is as close as your runes say.”

“I’ll give it one more try,” the prince says, and he knocks again, the loudest his fists can pound on the door, and he shouts, “Hello! Service!”

Finally, blessedly, a peculiar looking man, his jaw protruding and stuck out almost comically and his eyes wide and his hair, well. Harry can’t say much because his hair isn’t particularly great, but it honestly looks like this man has horns, but he comes to the door, stares at Primus through the glass, and seems to crouch down out of sight to open it for them. If Harry didn’t know any better, he’d say that the man opened the latch with his mouth.

“At last,” Primus says, shakes most of the wet from his hair, “we require accommodation. Please help my friend take the horses to the stables,” he gestures over to Harry, and the bug-eyed horned-hair man stares at Harry, then makes a sound, something like a goat, and Harry stares back. 

“Hello!” Primus yells out inside the inn, and he spots the bath by the fire, still looks quite warm and entirely inviting and Harry is very jealous, when he shucks off his wet clothes and climbs into the water, sighing contentedly as he does so. 

“Good evening,” this lady comes in, and she’s beautiful with her dark features and she looks many times more exotic than Kendall. “I’m Veronica, I am the lady of this inn.”

“Well, I’m accustomed to better service, but you’re here now, that’s what matters,” Primus tells her, lounges around in his bath.

“Yes, my apologies,” she says, smiles, but Harry sees it’s not entirely sincere, and he frowns to himself, but doesn’t say much else. “Would you care for a glass of wine?” she presents to him a goblet of copper on a platter, and he looks at it for a moment, considering.

“No,” he says eventually, shakes his head. “My youngest brother just killed my other brother, Tersius, a few days ago with poisoned wine. Until he is dead, I shall only drink from my own stores.”

Harry blinks, because that must be a thing that seems normal here, killing your own siblings, because she just straightens up and smiles at him in understanding. 

“Though, my friend right here might be glad of a drop,” he gestures over to Harry, and he blinks again, because firstly, cast-off wine, and secondly, possibly  _ poisonous  _ cast-off wine. “And, your best room? Perhaps?”

“Of course,” she says, and presents her red-headed daughter with the platter with the goblet with a dismissive wave, and he frowns. She comes over to him and presents it, and he frowns again, but he accepts it all the same, and he sniffs at it a bit, and. Doesn’t smell out of the ordinary, even catches the slightest whiff of berries and a chocolate tone to the scent of it.

“Thank you,” he says, just under a murmur as Primus and the innkeeper’s wife discuss which room might be the most suitable. “That’s very kind, I’m Harry.”

She nods, says, “Bernard,” as she walks away. Harry freezes, because the name is decidedly not very female, and. More than that, the voice she’d spoken with was much lower, much deeper than his own, which is really saying something.

_ “Bahhhh,”  _ he jumps, looks behind him to see the man from earlier standing there, staring at him meanly. He butts his head to his back, and Harry yelps a bit as he’s directed out of the room, out to the stables next to the inn proper, wine sloshing rather precariously in the goblet as they go along, but he feels rather proud that none of it had spilled out.

They tend to the horses, or, rather, Harry tends to the horses, as the man leaves him almost immediately with his weird straight walk and hunched back and the roof leaks a bit, and the smell isn’t very pleasant, the way most stables do when it’s full of animals, but Harry notices that it’s just the horses this lonely night.

He considers going back in, enjoy his maybe poisonous drink inside where the fire’s roaring and there’s a strange but fit lady to tend to him, but the storm just seems to worsen outside, making the wooden walls almost shake, and he shudders at the thought of having to go out again and get even wetter. He’d always been rather prone to illness, and he’s the worst when it comes to be sick. Already feels the beginnings of a dreadful cold coming on, so he sighs, resigns himself to another few minutes in the stable, just until the worst of it passes.

He sniffs the wine again, and decides that it won’t do him much harm, and he could use the bit of warmth it will bring to his insides. But just as he raises the rim to his lips, he hears a great banging coming from the doors behind. Looks just in time for a great white horse emerge from the enclosed stall, and he barely recognizes that it’s got a golden horn on its heads before he realizes it’s charging straight at him. 

He freezes, doesn’t know what to do, but it doesn’t quite charge right at him; the unicorn,  _ the unicorn,  _ just misses him by a few inches, but enough to knock him down, and send the goblet of wine flying out of his hands, the liquid spilling all over the straw on the ground. 

“Bloody hell,” he mutters, and he glances at it, but the unicorn just raises its leg, as if pointing a hoof at the wine that had spilled, and Harry looks back down, actually listening to a bloody  _ animal,  _ no matter how magical it may be, that will always just be very strange, but. 

The hay that the wine had fallen on was scorched, smoking and Harry’s eyes widen when he realizes how it actually  _ was  _ poisoned, and that could have been his throat less than a minute ago. He’s just about to faint when he realizes, “Oh - oh, god. Primus.”

He scrambles up to his feet, and runs out to the rain and gets drenched once again.

.

Niall’s seen every room, and Veronica still hadn’t returned from tending to the new customer, so he makes his way down, feeling very comfy in his fluffy robe, and he sees her scurry up the stairs, missing him and muttering to herself and looking generally very irritated and vexed and she goes back to his room, but he’d rather not be in her company when she looks so angry. He goes down, and when he goes to the lounge, and he’s quite sure that it’s the first son of the King currently luxuriating in the bath he’d just been in in front of the fire.

“Oh, hello,” he says, and Niall blinks at him, chooses not to say anything in turn. “Dreadful weather we’re having, yes?”

“Um, yes. Dreadful,” he replies unsurely, but he doesn’t want to be rude to Primus, knows full well he’s the kindest among the brothers. “Been a real inconvenience tonight.”

“Traveling alone, are you?” he says, and he raises his leg straight up out of the water and stretches it, and Niall fights to keep his face blank. “I’ve just stabled my four stallions and my carriage. Well, I say mine. It belonged to my late father.”

“Did they?” Niall says, makes it abundantly clear in his tone that he’s not the least bit interested in this conversation, but he just. Keeps going.

“There was not a horse or beast he could not master,” he says, “So much so that in his youth, he took to riding a camel, which was comical.”

“Fascinating,” Niall says dryly.

“Well, when he passed, the carriage came to me,” he says proudly, “And it’s the largest in all of Stormhold, so they say.”

“How nice for you,” Niall says, nodding a bit because he doesn’t know what else to do. Makes to leave, tells him, “If you’ll excuse me-”

“Wait,” he stops him, and Niall fights to keep his groan in. “That stone you’re wearing. It can’t be.”

Niall pauses, freezes in his steps, and suddenly becomes very aware of the necklace he’s wearing, and he’s really rather stupid. 

“Come here, let me see it,” Primus says, reaches out a hand to try and beckon him closer, and Niall can’t seem to move. 

“I - I don’t know-”

“You’ve got no idea what you’re meddling with,” he says, and his face goes so serious. “I am Primus, the first born of Stormhold and I demand that you bring it to me!”

“There’s no need to shout,” he mutters, mostly to himself, and the prince just yells, agitated.

“Bring me the stone!” he shouts his command, “Now!”

“Prince Primus!” someone suddenly comes in through the front door, and Niall’s eyes widen and his jaw drops when he sees it’s Harry, drenched and looking generally awful and terrified. “Don’t touch anything they give you! They tried to-”

A great, horrible, slash of metal against flesh, and Niall and Harry watch in horror as Veronica steps back from the prince’s now very much lifeless body, literal blue blood trickling out of the cut she’d made in his throat and from the terrifyingly sharp edge of her great glass knife. 

Harry glances to him, and he shields Niall from her, and they’ve had a very long day that just seems to be getting longer as they watch her physically transform. Her beautiful feminine features angling and sharpening into no less beautiful, no less exotic, but a much more masculine face, evil and sinister and Niall stares at him, and he’s rather familiar, and-

“Oh, oh god,” he breathes and Harry glances back at him. “I’m honestly so,  _ so incredibly _ stupid.”

“What-”

“Billy!” the man calls out, and the goat-like husband wakes from where he’d been napping on the counter. “Get him!”

He springs into action immediately, jumping right on the counter, then down to the ground, and he charges straight for them, but the unicorn comes galloping in through the doors, and knocks him away, easily, straight back from where he’d come from, and they watch as he’s turned back into his true form, back to a small goat, knocked dead.

The unicorn neighs, stands up on its back legs and down, then up again as it approaches who Niall now knows and recognizes is a witch, the same witch who’d killed his fellow stars.

He just smirks, mocking, almost, and raises his free hand up to the unicorn and a great, great flame of bright green engulfs it, and drowns the room in green fire. 

“Shit,” Harry breathes, and Niall glances at him, “That’s - that’s him. The one they told me about.”

“What?” he asks, confused, but Harry just looks at him, grabs his hand, and pulls them towards the door, but he points his hands towards the only way out and the fire surrounds them from every direction, leaving them trapped.

Harry covers Niall, and he can feel him shaking, and they back up towards the wall as the witch approaches them, the flames giving way to him.

He raises his great glass knife, begins to speak, “The burning golden heart of a star at peace is so much better than your frightened little heart. Even so, better than no heart at all.”

He raises the knife higher, and Niall feels fear just overtake his body, but Harry holds him tightly. 

“Niall,” he says, links their fingers together. “Hold me tight and think of home.”

He watches him dig into his coat pocket, and the tiny stub of the Babylon candle is clenched tightly in his fist. He reaches into the flames and his hand is engulfed in it, and he groans but doesn’t let go. Niall holds him tightly and closes his eyes tight and thinks desperately of home, and the bright light takes them away just before he hears the witch smash his knife onto the wall where they’d been standing against, crushing it into thousands of tiny little pieces, dust and shards of glass. He hears enough, the last of it the loud, wailing cry of  _ “Noooooooo!” _

.

They burn, burn, and travel, faster than light, but. They don’t end up in Wall, like he’d thought they should.

Instead, he and Niall burn bright and crash and land on top of a cloud, and he gets drenched and all wet again as he comes to, and they’re on a bloody cloud in the middle of a lightning rainstorm and he has had  _ enough.  _

“What the hell did you do?” he yells over the thunder and rain and darkness.

_ “‘What did I do?!’”  _ Niall repeats, enraged. “What did you do!  _ ‘Think of home,’  _ that was a great plan! You thought of your home and I thought of mine, and now we’re halfway between the two!”

“Oh, you stupid cow!” Harry says, and he watches Niall scoff at him. “What did you think of your home for?”

“You just said ‘home!’” Niall says, and. He does have a point, but Harry won’t say anything. “If you wanted me to think of your home, you should have said!”

“Some crazy hot lady - or man, this place is  _ insane-  _ was going to cut your heart out, and you wanted more specific instruction?” he yells, feels his blood boiling in his veins. “Perhaps you’d like it in writing, or a diagram, maybe!”

He barely finishes shouting it when a net,  _ really,  _ traps him and Niall, and they yell and try to get out of it, which makes them even more entangled in it and they’re hauled up, up until they pulled on board to. To a ship, a ship in the middle of a thunderstorm in the sky. Lovely.

He and Niall try to get most of the wet out of their eyes, laid out on the floor of the deck, and when they come to, several men in great raincoats and goggles to keep out the rain stand over them, observing. The nearest of them, a handsome looking lad who looks frankly quite cuddly, Harry’s sure. But his beard and his brown eyes are set in a frown, mean and threatening, and he straightens up slightly, calls out, “Captain Tommo! Caught ourselves a little bonus! A couple of Lightning Marshals!”

Someone comes forward then from the back, and he’s not very tall, but he’s got this greater-than-life presence about him. He can’t be much older than the other lad, or Harry for that matter, but he looks menacing, eyes a stormy blue, harsher than Niall’s and certainly much harsher than this storm, and his mouth is set in a frown as he looks at them.

“They don’t look like Lightning Marshals to me, Payno,” he says, voice gritty and rough though the tone itself is quite light, as he speaks to the one who’d called out to him. 

“Why else would anyone be up here in the middle of a storm?” the man called Payno asks him, and the Captain pauses.

_ “‘Why else would anyone be up here in the middle of a storm,’”  _ he repeats, mouth contorting slightly into a comical sort of frown. “Well, let’s think. Hmm, maybe for the same godforsaken reason we are!” He pauses, and stares right at them, “Now, who are you?”

Harry looks to Niall, who looks back, and they both look at the Captain, who frowns deeper at them in turn.

“Let’s see if a night on our lovely brig will loosen their lips,” he says, “Get them to the brig!”

“You heard the Captain,” Payno calls out to the other men, “Let’s go!’

They move immediately, pulling the net off of them and grabbing them, pulling them up to their feet and dragging them along the rain-drenched wooden floors of the deck..

“Get them into the brig and the rest of you dirty dogs, back to work! We’ve got lightning to catch!” he goes on to shout at the rest of them, and Harry manages to catch a glimpse of the ship. It’s not massive, but it is very strange, to say the least. Quite no other way to describe a ship flying around in the sky with this great balloon sort of thing attached above it, keeping it in the air, and these great wings of wire on the other end of the ship. He watches the lightning crackle and run through the lines of wire, and. Incredibly, the other men on the ship seem to be huddled by these wings, working to capture the lightning. He thinks. He’s had a very long few days.

They’re thrown into the birg, a dark, smelly room where the dried meats and spare rope and furniture and such are stored, and he and Niall are made to sit on a large sack filled with sand, tied together with their arms bound and backs to each other, and he thinks. He’s going to die in a floating boat/balloon hybrid in the sky with actual pirates and an admittedly fit star. He supposes there are less interesting ways to go. 

“They’re going to kill us,” Niall says simply after several moments of painful silence between them. 

“Well. It seems as though they are,” he replies, and he figures he’s allowed to sigh. The life he could have had. 

Niall does the same behind him, says, “You know. It’s funny. I used to watch people having adventures.” He pauses, and Harry hears the smallest laugh come from his mouth. “I envied them.”

Harry feels his sadness, feels it make the already dark room that much dimmer, almost. Tries to lighten the mood a bit, says, “You ever heard of the expression?  _ ‘Be careful what you wish for?’” _

“What? So ending up with my heart cut out,” Niall replies, and he sounds heartbroken, and Harry’s mood immediately dampens all the more when he realizes his joke had gone quite south. “That’ll serve me right, will it?”

“No, no, I didn’t,” he tries to word what he means properly, decides jokes really aren’t his strong suit. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Niall goes silent, and Harry listens to him breathe. Just taking in their situation, the adventure he didn’t quite bargain for. “Look, I admire your dreaming. Shop boy like me, I could never have imagined an adventure this big in order to have wished for it. I just, I just thought I’d find some lump of celestial rock and take it home, and that would be it.”

He’s glad, really, to hear Niall chuckle softly at that, and say, “And you got me.”

“Well, I’m sure there are worse traveling companions,” he muses, “Probably.”

Niall laughs, louder and more assured, and Harry smiles, joins in not much later, because his laugh really was quite infectious and he feels the slightest bit better, hearing it. 

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years watching Earth,” Niall starts to say, and he listens. “It’s that people aren’t what they may seem. There are shop boys, and. Well, there are boys who just happen to work in shops for the time being. You’re a twat a lot of the time, Harry,” and Harry laughs, snickers quietly to himself because. True. “But really. You’re no shop boy.”

Harry is genuinely touched, and he thinks Niall is a pain a lot of the time, but something he’s come to observe is that he doesn’t quite know how to lie. 

“You saved my life, and I’m grateful. Even if it was botched, you know, and. Well, we’re here, but still,” he says frankly, but softly all the same. “Thank you.”

He moves his hand slightly, movement limited but still, and covers Harry’s hand with his own in a gentle touch, and Harry straightens up slightly, not quite expecting that, but he welcomes it all the same. Is thankful that they’d been tied with their backs to each other, because his blush, he’s sure, is very visible on his face. 

“Thank you, as well,” he clears his throat. “For. For coming with me, and everything else. I know I’ve been annoying.”

“At least you know it,” he replies, and it makes Harry laugh despite himself. 

.

Zayn mutters to himself, knows the power of the star is draining quickly from him and knows it shows on his face.

The blow of losing the star had taken its toll on him. Taken his best knife, and any bit of any sort of good mood he’d had when it had first landed. He’d taken the dead Prince’s carriage and horses for himself, left the fire-engulfed ruins of the inn he’d fashioned to lure the star in, and he remembers that he may have left the goat vendor behind, thinks the magic he’d used to transfigure him into a woman might have worn off by now, but it’s not a concern in the least.

The horses drive the carriage onwards through the country, and he watches the landscape change as they go, does his utmost to focus on the greenery outside and not on his reflection on the glass. Wrinkles and bags under his eyes, the beginnings of spots and he needs that star, severely, desperately. 

He groans, tries to run his hand through his hair, but. Well, his hair had fallen off, and he gasps as he watches the tufts fall to the ground, limp, and he yells, eternally frustrated.

He magics the horses to stop, and he stomps outside, grabs the first animal he sees (large lizard by the marshes) and kills it swiftly. Reads, and his eyebrows furrow when the entrails and organs tell him that she’s airborne. Does it again, with an unfortunate fox, and they tell him the same thing, and he allows himself a good shout into the emptiness of his surroundings, just angry and tired and exhausted and old, so old. 

He manages to find a small crocodile, and those have always been very useful to him, always reliable. Cuts it up, and reads. A sky vessel, headed north for the port town on Mount Drummond, and. His heart stops in his chest, and he just groans again when he discovers he’s not the only one seeking the star now. 

Seems like the useless goat vendor had blabbed to Prince Septimus, last of the Stormhold brothers, and they’re following his tracks. He curses, zaps at the horses to get a move on as he climbs into the carriage, absolutely cannot let this prince get his star and take his eternal life.

.

“Tell me about Kendall, then,” and he really can’t quite believe that Niall is asking him this question, and he gives himself a moment to process the request. 

Then, he actually thinks. Thinks, tries to think, but. 

“Well, she,” he attempts, but it’s moot. Tries to think again, but nothing. “Well. There’s nothing more to tell you.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, and then Niall starts telling him gently, “I don’t know much, but. The little I know about love is that, um. It’s supposed to be unconditional. It’s not something you can buy.”

“Hang, hang on,” he says, frowning. “This wasn’t about me buying her love. This was a way for me to prove how I felt.”

“Ah, I see,” Niall says slowly. Harry knows he’s being made fun of, and it makes him pout all that much more. “And what’s she doing to prove how she feels about you?”

“Well,” Harry says immediately, tries to prove him wrong, but he goes silent again, because. Well. He pouts haughtily to himself, and he wants to say,  _ ‘Kendall doesn’t need to do anything to prove her love for me, i just  _ **_know_ ** _ ,’  _ but he doesn’t want to give Niall the satisfaction.

“Look, Niall,” he says instead, “you’ll understand when you meet her, alright? Well, provided that we don’t get murdered by pirates first.”   
“Hmm,” Niall hums, “Murdered by pirates. Heart torn out and eaten. Meet Kendall. I can’t quite decide which of the lot sounds like the most fun.”

Harry is just about to snipe back when the door to the brig opens with a bang, and in comes the Captain of the ship. He’s thumbing the dull edge of his sword, hanging on his side, and he stares at them intently, considering as he closes the door behind him carefully. 

“So,” he begins, walks around them for a moment, “this is the part where you tell me who you are and why you’re up here. Or,” he steps in next to Niall, leans down and squeezes one of Niall’s fingers, bends it back slightly. Harry hears him almost whimper, but he bites it back at the last minute, and he knows he’s staring the Captain down. “I’ll snap his fingers one by one like dry twigs!”

Harry hears the muffled laughter and snickers of the crew, no doubt listening in on their imminent torture and deaths.

“My, my name is Harry Styles,” he answers, tries to keep his calm about everything. “This is my friend, Niall-”

“‘Friend?’” he says, mocks him. Stares at Niall, says, “Saw you two holding hands, no way you’re just  _ friends.” _

Harry freezes, and he feels Niall do the same behind him. “That-”

“Oh, fuck all if you’re into blokes or whatever, lad,” he says, comes around to look at Harry now. “Don’t matter much to us, here on this ship. We don’t trouble ourselves with conformities, here.”

Harry blinks at him, and leans his head back when Captain Tommo brings his head down to stare intently at him, properly. “What we care about is that you don’t share. Share and share alike aboard my vessel!”

Again, the cheers and such of the others behind the door, and Niall starts cussing him out, quite colorfully, and Harry knows he can probably take care of himself, but he can’t quite control his anger, all the same.

“If you dare even touch him-”

“Look, mate, you might think you’re showing a load of spirit here,” he says, “but if you talk back to me again, I’ll feed your tongue to the dogs. That fair with you?”

Harry stops speaking, and he swallows his nerves down. What he can, mostly. “Sir-”

“Nice, but don’t cut me off, mate,” he says, and He walks about them, considering. “Let’s see, hmm. A hanging’s always good for morale. Maybe we’ll watch you dance a gallows jig!”

Harry has no idea what that meant, but he knows well enough to be frightened, as the crew cheers again and Tommo looks entirely too happy. 

“Or, perhaps I’ll just tip you over the side and have done with it,” he says to more shouts of glee from the other side of the door. “It’s a long way down. Plenty of time to reminisce about your pitifully short lives.”

“Please, look,” he says, tries to reason with him. “We’re just trying to make our way home, back to a place called Wall, where I come from-”

“What did you say?” he says, eyes narrowing dangerously. 

Harry blinks, but doesn’t dare disobey. “I - I said we were trying to get home to Wall-”

Suddenly, he grabs on to his shoulder, hard, and swiftly brings out a small knife, dangerously sharp, and brings it to Harry’s throat. Niall gasps behind him, and tries to move, get at the Captain in any way he can, but he just moves away as he glares at Harry.

“One lie too many, mate,” he tells him, and Harry trembles, shakes under his gaze. “Wall? That’s a laugh. Thought you could just wander onto my patch did you! And live to tell the tale!”

“P-please, I-”

“Okay, listen,” his tone immediately changes as he whispers, as he leans forward and stares directly at him. His eyes aren’t so stormy now, and he’s even got this small smile on his face, not menacing. “Take off your clothes.”

“What?” Harry squawks, and Niall just moved even more, calling the Captain a  _ “twat, no good slag with no life and fucking git with no soul-”  _ among many things, but he just shakes his head, even has the audacity to chuckle. 

“No mate, I'm not into you like that,” he tells him. “Blondie might just have my head.”

“But-”

“I can help you, but only if you do as I say,” he says. He cuts off the rope binding Niall and Harry together, and they look at him, confused, and he just scurries about, pulling something out from the corner of the room. “Do you want to live or not? Strip! Blondie, Niall, whatever, help him if you have to-”

“I don't, no, I'll do it,” Harry says quickly, feels himself turn crimson as he unbuttons his coat and shirt. Niall doesn't look at him, and when he looks up, Tommo is standing in front of them with a mannequin, and a great grin on his face.

“What-”

“Everything but your knickers!” he says, takes Harry's shirt and starts dressings the mannequin. “And see that little rug? Yeah, that one, lift it, there's a little latch, and it leads to a bit of a hidden tunnel, goes straight to my cabin.”

“What! I don't-”

“Blondie-”

“It's Niall.”

“Yes, yes. You stay with me, and,” he says, and leans in to murmur something in his ear. They look awfully close, and Harry stares at them, feeling unreasonably jealous and reasonably ridiculous as he removes his trousers and is left in his undergarments, but then. 

“Go on! Through there!” he says, shoves at him and he almost goes toppling down, but he does as he's told and finds the trap door, and goes down. 

.

_ “Pleading won't take you far with me, boy!”  _

The crew listen intently through the door, giddy and cheering as their Captain tortures the poor souls inside, elbowing each other as he taunts them. 

“Shit, go to the deck!” one of them whisper-shouts, urging them to go mover to the deck when he realizes that Tommo’s opened the window and was about to throw the prisoner out of it.

They scramble over one another, running up to the deck and look over the side, just in time to see the body thrown out, falling through the clouds and their Captain watching it as it goes. 

He turns his back, looks up to see them watching, and they pull back their heads out of sight immediately, just to see him banging out of the brig, holding the other prisoner by the collar of his bathrobe, dragging him along the floor as he yells and swears at him. 

“I'm taking this one to the cabin,” he tells them, hauling him up to his feet, “and mark my words, anyone who disturbs me for the next few hours will get the same treatment.”

“What? You’ll,” Payno gestures with his hands suggestively, and Tommo makes a weird face at him.

“No, you twat,” he says, pushing Niall along, “I'll throw you over the side as well.”

“Oh, oh yeah,” he says, looking a bit relieved and nods along, before he closes the door behind them. They hear him tell everyone else on the other side, “Captain’s busy, so should you be.”

The Captain opens the door to his cabin, throws Niall onto the couch just by the door, and says loudly for show, “Get in here, you useless, good for nothing-” Bangs the door closed, and sighs a bit.

Harry turns from where he'd been staring at the great wall of windows behind the main desk, still just in his underwear. He's not very shy about his body, knows he's well defined enough and there's little he'd want to change about it, but considering everyone else is so dressed, he thinks the embarrassment is apt. 

Tommo locks up, pushes all the latches and turns the keys, and sighs a great sigh, then turns to look at them, honest grin on his face. “So. That went rather well, I think.”

Harry blinks at him, then to Niall, who's got the beginnings of a laugh on his face. It suits him tremendously well. 

“Right, yeah, sorry there, mate,” he helps Niall up, and he brings them over to the large table in the middle of the cabin, seats them. “Want a beer? Sorry, but I've been begging for a pint all day, hope you don't mind-”

“Oh, um. I've never had one before,” Niall tells him, and Louis gives him a look of shock and terrible sympathy. 

“I'm doing you a favor,” he says, and he turns to Harry, asks, “What about you, mate? Want a pint?”

“Um, alright, I guess,” he says. 

“Never had one?”

“No, I have,” he says. “Just don't like it very much.”

Louis stares at him as well, in shock and offense. “I never.”

Harry shrugs, and Louis haughtily turns away from him. Sets a large mug of amber, fizzy liquid in front of Niall, and the second. He feigns putting it in front of Harry, but the at the last moment, keeps it close to his chest, muttering, “you don't deserve this.

Harry rolls his eyes, and Niall laughs, takes a sip from his beer, and makes a surprised, not displeased face, and swallows down a bit more.

“My name’s Louis,” Tommo says as he sits down at the head of the table. “Sorry for all the trouble, but. You know, comes with the reputation.”

“Wait!  _ You're  _ Captain Tommo?” Niall says, eyes widening. “I've watched you throw out probably hundreds of people over the years.”

“Watched?” he says curiously as he takes a sip from his mug, and Harry's heart stops. 

“Oh, I just meant,” Niall backtracks, clearing his throat slightly. “You're really very known, for being terrifying and ferocious. I - so, all those people thrown, they were mannequins? And your crew fell for it?”

“Works every time,” he says proudly, beaming at him. “Hate killing people, so much work, and honestly not my thing. Was my dad’s, but not my cup of tea. So I bargain and do some trickery, intimidation, boom. Towering reputation without spilling one drop of blood.”

“A nightmare to get off of clothing, honestly,” a woman comes in from some corner of the room, completely soundlessly, and it makes Harry and Niall jump. She's beautiful, dark hair and rather plump lips and she seems very unphased at their state of undress, and introduces herself to them. “I'm Sophia, lone lass on board. Lovely to meet you.”

“So,” Harry pauses, tries not to let his face too hot because of his nakedness, “are you, um, the Captain’s wife?”

“He wishes,” she snorts, and Louis pouts. 

“She's my wife, actually,” the man called Payno comes in from the trap door Harry had crawled out of, and his face looks softer, and he looks at them kindly. “First officer Liam Payne, sirs.”

“So,” Niall says slowly, “you're in on the act?”

“Someone has to deal with this one,” he says, and Louis just snorts.

“How long til we make port, then, Payno?”

“Just a few hours.”

“Well, no time to waste,” Louis says, clapping his hands once. “Got to make sure you're unrecognizable. I can do hair, but-”

“Wait, what?” Harry's eyes widen comically,  _ “You're _ going to cut my hair?!”

“No person better on board, in every honesty,” she tells him, almost sadly, and Harry swallows. “But clothes, first and foremost.”

She stares at him, skims her hands on his shoulders, and Harry feels awfully naked. He doesn't want to overthink or assume, but he catches the jealous glint in Niall's eyes when he watches her do so, and it really shouldn't make him feel the way he does at the moment. 

“Hmm, none of Louis’ things will fit you,” she remarks. “Liam, get me that suit you wore to my cousin’s wedding, should fit him rather nicely-”

“No, wait,” Harry says, though Liam’s already gone off to retrieve it. “I can't take that, that would be too much-”

“Oh, no, don't you worry about that,” she tells him, waving him off. “He hates it, in any case, and I'm sure it would be more well suited to you. And for you, love,” she turns to Niall, and hums a bit to herself as she thinks. After a while, she gets this enlightened look on her face, and she looks to Louis. “Lou, remember that old midnight blue suit you made me throw out but I never did?”

His face lightens immediately, and he stands, going over to some door while saying, “Soph, you're a genius.”

“Why else am I here?” she shrugs. 

“Oh, no, I'm fine,” Niall says, shaking his head when Louis comes out of his rather large closet, almost a whole other room, a dark blue suit on a hanger in his hands. 

“You're in a bathrobe, Blondie,” Louis deadpans, and Niall goes quiet, and accepts the suit reluctantly. 

And so Niall goes to change, and Harry watches long enough to see the smooth expanse of his back, pale and freckled, and he looks away when Louis raises his eyebrows at him. Liam brings back a beautiful coat of white, tailored trousers and a velvet vest and a soft cotton shirt that billows on his skin, makes him feel light and cool even in the layers. They find a pair of fine leather boots for him, and he already feels like another person. 

Niall comes in then, and he looks exceptionally. Exceptional, refined and very handsome in a coat and suit of dark blue, makes him seem paler and makes him glow all the same, the necklace sparkling from where it peeks under the few undone buttons of his shirt, and his hair. It seemed that Louis  _ did  _ know how to handle hair, quite well, with the way he had styled Niall’s locks. It's combed off from his face, looking so soft in soft waves just to the side, and he looks happier.

“I-”

He tries to say something, anything really, but Louis drags him to a chair, sets him down forcefully. Hums as he covers his front with a cloak, and immediately works on his hair. Harry tries not to whimper as great tufts of hair fall before his eyes. 

“You said you were from Wall, mate?” Louis asks him, and Sophia offers Niall a cup of tea, Liam sat next to him. 

“Yes, lived there all my life,” he answers, and he hopes he doesn't offer the same question to Niall. 

“From Doncaster myself, just a ways off from Stormhold,” he says, scissors working quickly on his locks. “My dad’s always told me those were folktales, yeah? A completely ordinary world, it just couldn't exist. But I'd always known he was wrong.”

“So you were over here, looking over there?” Niall asks him.

“Oh, yeah, since I was a young lad,” he replies, chuckling. “I mean, my dad, he's quite known. Captain Ghostmaker, they’d called him, ruthless marauder and cold-blooded killer. He was a real sort of pirate, he fit the type. I just, never did. And he and I would always get in rows over it, he wanted me to take over the ship and the business after, but I never wanted to.”

“Then, why are you here?” Harry asks him curiously.

“Freddie,” he replies simply, fondly, and Niall and Harry blink at him. 

“His baby,” Sophia supplies for them, and Harry feels his heart warm.

“My little lad,” he says, voice so full of love and affection and his face softens considerably. “He was an accident, but the best kind. His mother and I, well. We never quite, you know. I love her, and she loves me, but not in the way parents of a child should love each other. And it wasn't enough, we were always fighting and eventually, she told me she wouldn't let me see him, unless I'd provide, really.”

“So, you took over your father,” Niall says slowly, and Louis smiles sadly at him. 

“Collecting lightning was never really my dream, but it gets me good money for him,” he says, and he exhales, patting Harry's shoulders hard. He winces, but fights not to make a sound. “Oh, you've no idea how  _ good _ this feels, talking about this with you two. Those two are great, but after a while, meh.”

“Wow, Lou,” Liam frowns at him, chewing on a biscuit. “After all the support we'd given you.”

“Ay, but you know, feels good to not have to keep up my appearances,” he says, pulling on Harry's hair to get the ends straight, and Harry jumps when he sees how long it is, seemed to have magically grown a foot while Louis was speaking. “Being so scary and menacing all the time for the sake of the crew, so tiring. It helps, don't get me wrong. The reputation. Keeps enemies and competition away, and helps with the deals and the business I make. But sometimes, it does wear me down a bit. So the little things make me happy, Soph’s roasts, pranking Payno, that sort of thing.”

“I don't understand that,” he says, pouting a bit as he considers it. “Surely it would make you happier just to be yourself? Why fight to be accepted by people you don't actually want to be like?”

Niall nods, a slight smirk on his face, and Harry knows he's mocking him slightly when he sighs, “Yeah. Why would anyone do that to himself?”

Harry looks at him, really, and he feels a slight sense of shame. “Exactly,” he says, though he can't quite come to terms with it himself.

.

They make port not much later, Niall being shepherded out by Liam to help the crew, and he leaves quickly enough. Learns the other crew members’ names, and what it is he needs to do around here, to earn his keep. 

He comes along with Louis and Liam and some of the others down to the black market, great box carried by a few of them to a small shop in the heart of the town, unassumingly marked by a small plaque on the door that says, ‘Ferdy’s Office.’ 

But when he steps foot into the little shop, it's crammed, filled to the brim with magical wonders. Glass flowers by the buckets and ropes and chains of magical qualify and different animals, stuffed and incredibly lifelike. Different, strange ingredients that boggle his mind a bit, and it reeks of illegal trading.

“Ferdy,” Louis is in Captain Tommo mode, standing straight and his chin out, eyes a menacing blue as he greets the shop owner. Middle-aged man with beady eyes and long, scraggly hair, ridiculous hat on his head. He reminds Niall very much of a monkey, but he says nothing.

He presents the box, and Ferdy slides the circle opening to peek at the contents. Lightning, crackling and bright and zapping within the box, quite ready to fly out, but he slides it back into position, and straightens back up.

“Yeah, doesn't seem  _ very _ fresh, I'll be honest,” he says, his speech quick. 

“Maybe you'd like a little taste, young Ferdinand,” Louis says, beckons Liam for the strapped tube he's got. 

“No, no,” he says, but Louis is already uncapping the tube and he sighs, says resignedly, “well, there you go-”

The bolt crackles, louder and it's bright, a flash that streaks straight out of the tube and knocks down several glass vials of potions on the shelving Louis had aimed at. 

“Brilliant,” Ferdy says shortly, “Like they're cheap.”

“I think they're still crackling,” Louis hands the tube of lightning back to Liam, “Still very alive, very  _ fresh,  _ you might say. So. Name your best price.”

“For ten thousand bolts?”

“Ten thousand bolts of finest quality Grade A.”

“Yeah,” he says, but he makes a strange face. Like an exaggerated frown, but not quite. “But it's difficult to shift, yeah? Difficult to store. If I get the Revenue Men in here sniffing round, what's the-” he makes gestures and sounds that Niall can't quite understand. 

Louis doesn't falter, stares at him straight, unmoving, and Ferdy blows a raspberry as he considers the box of bolts. 

“Best offer,” he says, coming to a conclusion, “150 guineas.”

“Lads, put the merchandise back on board and prepare to sail,” he says decisively, and they all jump to do as he says. Shakes Ferdy’s hand and greets him, “Ferdinand, was good to see you-”

“W-wait, hold on,” he says, “one minute, hold on Cuddles,” he says to a particularly large crew member as he comes to pick up the box. “160, 160.”

“Seeing as I'm particularly generous today,” Louis holds out his hand for the crew to stop. “I'll settle for 200.”

“200,” he grins. “Okay, you're having a laugh.”

Niall tries to hide the scowl on his face, and sees Louis hasn't let up, not in the slightest. 

“What, is the air too thin up there?” he snickers, and he's the only one doing so. 

“Being really rude today, Ferdy,” Louis says, straight face and eyes just getting meaner. “200.”

“180,” Ferdy counters. 

“200.”

“That's not negotiation,” he says, looking a bit more frustrated. “I'm changing my number. 185.”

“Did I hear 200?” Louis persists calmly, arching an eyebrow at him. 

“From you, you did, yeah,” Ferdy says. 

“You said 200.”

“If I did you're a ventriloquist,” he retorts, and Niall wonders just how much longer they can keep this up. Doesn't seem to be the first time Louis has tried to barter with this man. “Okay, 195, final offer.”

“195 it is,” Louis holds out his hand and they shake on it. “So, with sales tax, that's, hmm. Let's see, 200.”

“Brilliant,” Ferdy’s smile drops immediately, and he tells them to put the box in the back. 

Niall blinks, and Liam and Cuddles bring up the box over to the back, and Ferdy gestures for Louis to follow him to a secluded corner. 

He follows them, but when he sees that Niall's there, Ferdy frowns, irritated, says, “Yes? Can I help you?”

He blinks again, and glances at Louis, who shrugs slightly, and he rolls his eyes and moves away, but not so far that he can't still hear them.

“Nosy,” he mutters, and he speaks to Louis, “have you, have you heard any of these rumors going around about a fallen star? Everyone's talking about it, you get your hands on one of ‘em, we can shut up shop. Retire.”

“Fallen star,” Louis repeats just the slightest bit louder, maybe for Niall's sake, and Niall feels his heart stop in his chest. Looks up to see glancing back at him discreetly, before he looks back to Ferdy, shakes his head. 

“Nothing, on your travels?” he asks further, but Louis just goes on shaking his head. 

“No.”

“Not even a little sniff or whisper?” Ferdy asks him. “Everyone's going on about it down at the market.”

“Which market? The market down at Wall?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, Ferdy. You're wasting your time listening to gossip from the kind of pawn scum trading down there,” he tells him. “And - Christ, speak of the devil,” Louis says when a rather beaten, run down woman, middle-aged and her red hair showing white roots. 

“Oh yeah, what were you saying then,” she comes, accent strong. 

“Oh, about. What a wonderful woman you are, Sal,” Louis tells her, and Niall rolls his eyes. Hers, though, seem to sweep over him, as if. As if she can't quite see him. It's a strange sensation, but. “World wouldn't be the same place without you.”

“Right, yeah, world wouldn't be the same place,” Ferdy repeats, and she glares at him. 

“Well, you two have business to attend to,” Louis says, nods his head in goodbye. “Sal, Ferdy.”

Louis pats Niall's back, gets him moving, rather quickly, and they move back to the ship. Louis doesn't let go, and Niall would normally shove him off, but with news of his presence here in a place that isn't so kind to those like him, he appreciates it greatly. 

They come back to the ship, and most of the crew is shocked to find a young man, handsome and smiling, green eyes glinting mischievously at them as he's perched himself on top of a pile of ropes and sacks, legs crossed as he relaxes with a pipe in his hand. His clothes are clean, rich looking and his long, brown hair curls at the ends, kissing his shoulders. 

Louis, Liam and Niall aren't quite so shocked. Though, Niall allows him a moment to sweep his eyes over him, and. He really is very fit, moreso now. 

“Captain Tommo,” he says, voice deep and laced with confidence, though Niall can still pick up his nervousness. 

Some of the crew have their hands on the handles of their blades, but Louis pushes through them, calls out, “Stand down. Meet my cousin, Harry Styles.”

Harry stands when Louis gestures for him to, and Niall barely hides the roll of his eyes and snort when he puts down the pipe, unable to hide a cough. 

“He’ll be joining us for our journey home,” Louis shakes his hands, pats on his back when he sees him having a bit of difficulty breathing, making him cough all the more. “Figured you might use a mate. Liked this one more, didn’t irritate me as much. The other one would have made you want to set yourself on fire.”

Niall is barely able to hide his laughter, more so when Harry doesn’t hide the ridiculous hurt, offended face he gives Louis, but he can’t think much of it when Cuddles is pushing him forward and he meets them.

Harry pats his arm awkwardly, small, unsure smile on his face as he does so, and Niall gives one back, not sure of what to do. 

Liam coughs, and they both turn to look at him, only to see the rest of the crew staring intently at them, waiting.

Niall realizes, and rolls his eyes, but Harry doesn’t seem to follow. He looks at Niall, confused, and he stares back at him, then tilts his head a bit, hopes he understands. 

“Wh - oh, oh,” Harry says, then frowns, but when Louis is the one who clears his throat this time, he jumps, and pulls Niall near, flush to his body and makes a silly “grrrr” noise, to many cheers from the crew. They separate quickly, and Niall manages to catch the eye roll from Liam, and he very much agrees with him.

“Right, lazy dogs!” Liam’s in Payno mode, calling out to the rest of the crew and they all jump into action, pulling ropes and fixing sails and preparing to set sail. “Let’s get young Harry on his way home!’

Harry and Niall find themselves standing on the foot of the ship, on the bow, looking ahead to the skies and the vast terrain below them. 

“Don’t be getting any ideas,” Niall tells him, wind whipping through their hair as the ship sails along the clouds.

“Of course,” Harry nods, giving him a small smile. “I never had the opportunity to say so, but you look very handsome.”

Niall feels himself blush, maybe glow a bit, but he clears his throat, nods to show he’s heard. “Yeah, um. Thank you. So do you. You look, well. You look more like yourself, or. The way you should be.”

He watches Harry pause, and he knows he doesn’t quite understand what he’d meant. He doesn’t ask for a clarification, instead he asks, “What do you think it is, then? That’s making me look more. Me?”

Niall smiles wryly at him, says, “The hair. It suits you. No bit of shop boy left in you, as it should be.”

Harry blushes, but Niall doesn’t say much more, and they embrace the winds and clouds as they pass through. That is, until Louis yells at them both, and they jump, and are made to go to work.

.

It goes on from there. They’re in the ship for a good few days, and they’ve been put to work. Cleaning and sailing and cooking and whatever they can to help out, and they don’t complain, nor do they want to. The crew, they discover, is a lot like their Captain. Fearsome, terrifying on the first glance, but in every actuality, all so warm and welcoming and have the greatest laughs together, and they welcome the two of them in on the fold easily enough, though not without the ribbing and teasing.

Sophia runs the ship, they discover, though Louis is Captain. She keeps it in shape, and all the men listen to what she says and take it seriously, and they hadn’t been lying. She does cook magnificently, and after the day’s work, they’re fed well.

They both have fencing lessons with Liam and Louis, though Niall seems to take to it more, can be seen in the afternoons sparring with Liam, moving quickly and swiftly across the floor of the deck and avoiding hits and jabs easily, getting many of his own in. Harry is slower, but he gets there, and after a few days, he manages to disarm Louis, which he counts as a success.

They experience the lightning catching firsthand on the second day, when they sail through a horrific storm, much to Louis’ genuine pleasure. 

It’s a lot to take, but they help as much as they can, helping capture the bolts of lightning in batches, filling up tubes of them as they strike the wire wings of the ship and travel through the tunnels of metal conducting them to transport them to where they are, ready to be bottled up and packed for sale.

The crew says nothing when Niall kisses Harry’s cheek soundly as the storm begins to dwindle down, nothing still when he glows quite literally in the dark of the rain, or of the redness of Harry’s cheeks or the wideness of their smiles.

.

Sophia insists they learn to dance when they confess that they don’t quite know how. Niall’s got an excuse, on account of not actually being from this world, though the others don’t know that, but Harry.

Cuddles turns the handle on the phonograph so the music plays, and the crew, Liam, Louis and Niall surround the deck, watching as Sophia tries to guide Harry through a basic waltz, though not succeeding all that much.

“Ay, he’s awful,” Louis says, slipping Niall a small mug of beer, and he takes it, grinning as he watches Harry trip over his own feet as Sophia keeps him upright. “Hopefully he’s better in the sack?”

“Christ, Louis,” Niall says, and he blushes, knows it shows across his skin, even under the glow he’s emitting, and he takes a sip from the mug to have something to do. 

They watch a bit more, laughing with the rest of them when Harry ends up spinning, though supposedly, he was supposed to help Sophia do so, and they laugh more when she starts telling him off, and then, Louis tells him quietly, “Niall, I know what you are.”

He stares at Louis, and he stops glowing almost immediately, and the smile falls from his face. Louis’ face doesn’t change, keeps his head forward and watches Harry cower under her glare.

“No need to worry,” he tells Niall, keeping his voice low. “No one on this vessel will harm you. Really, they love you, probably like you more than they like me. But just because we won’t hurt you, doesn’t mean other people won’t.”

Niall tells his heart to stop racing, keeps his eyes on Harry, and it just. Slows, slowly, comfortably, as he watches him, and he’d like to remain obtuse as to why it calms down, but he’s not so lucky. 

“Your emotions give you away, Blondie,” he tells him. “You’ve really got to learn to control them a bit, ‘specially since you’ve just been glowing more and more everyday. And I know you know why.”

“I glow because I’m a star,” he says, tries to keep even that just one bit of himself to himself, just for a while longer. “It's the one thing I can do. What I do best.”

“Right,” Louis doesn't fall for it, and Niall can't just stay sitting next to him. 

So he does the stupidest thing possible, and comes up to Sophia and Harry, says, “If I may.”

“Yes, thank you, love,” she says, relieved, and Harry pouts at her. Niall grins, goes to take her hands, but when she stalks off to go to Liam by the sides, he realizes. She's thought that he'd wanted to dance with Harry-

Well.

“Cuddles isn't playing the music just for you two to just stand there,” Payno calls out, and the rest of the crew shout with him, and Niall stares at them meanly. 

But Harry is coming forward and takes his hand in his, puts Niall's hand on his waist and sets his own on his shoulder, and Niall freezes for the briefest moment. 

Then they just fall to it, and though it's not entirely gracefully, it is easy to fall into step. He leads Harry in circular patterns through the floor, laughing and holding him close, when they almost step on each other’s feet as Harry tries to teach him how to dance, though he's no authority on it himself. 

He goes to make Harry spin, and Harry does so with flair, but spin in the wrong direction anyway, and as he reels him back in, and embraces him to much cheering, but neither of them are very coordinated, or graceful, or even have really good balance, so when Harry miscalculates and falls, Niall falls right on top of him, legs tangled together and faces too close.

“Well, dancing isn't a thing either of you do best, for sure,” Louis says amongst the laughter and cheering and hooting and jeering the men are doing, and Harry kicks his legs out from under Niall, just to be an ass. 

Niall laughs, unsure of what to do, and when he looks down at Harry properly, he's blushing, face flushed and shy grin on his face, eyes squinted at him. 

“You're blinding me,” he mutters, and Niall laughs again, feels himself shining, feels his heart race again, but for better reasons. 

.

“Due west, you say,” Zayn says, looking about the shelves, covering his head with the hood of his coat, “and you're certain he had a girl with him.”

“Yeah,” Ferdy says, and Zayn's never really liked him, but. Wherever he can get his information. 

“You're sure, absolutely sure?” he says, “sure you're not lying?”

“I'd cross my heart if I had one,” he chuckles, but Zayn's not laughing along. 

“You better be telling the truth you two-faced dog,” he tosses a coin at him in payment, as they'd agreed, and Ferdy catches it easily and admires the shine of it. 

“I can get you one of ‘em, actually,” he says, and he rolls his eyes as he looks through the products he's got. “Very good guard dogs, they can watch the back and the front doors. You can get anything you want.”

“What are are the chances of getting a Babylon candle?” he tries, thinks there's no harm, and anything to make this easier on him. The magic is wearing thin, and he feels it flow out of his body with every hour. 

Ferdy frowns, and proceeds to clear out his ear with his pinky, and Zayn doesn't hide his disgust. “That one’s slim. Though, um, I did know a girl once, if you know what I mean.”

Zayn walks away, not wanting to hear this, but he doesn't stop. “I'm a ladies man, ha. Who had a sister, or was it a cousin? Or was it her aunt? Not quite sure, but-”

“Enough,” Zayn says, having had enough, and points to his mouth and casts a spell. He goes to another set of shelves, sees a few things that would work well as a head covering, and as he perishes over them, Ferdy opens his mouth, and the sounds of a monkey shining and screaming pouring out of him tell Zayn he'd done the spell right. 

Try as he might, any which way he tries to open his mouth, or say any which word, Ferdy finds he can't speak, can only emit the sounds of a monkey. Zayn takes a few things, throws another coin to the table, though Ferdinand is rather occupied, and walks off with his purchase to the sound of strangled squawking. 

.

Louis is an awful driver, and it is honestly no wonder why Liam often steers the ship himself most of the time. Louis had been at the helm for less than an hour, and when Niall and Harry had seen the rest of the crew tie ropes around their wrists and tying them to poles and the sides of the ship, they'd known they'd be in for a ride. Twenty minutes in, everyone had gotten soaked to the bones when Louis had aimed their boat to the waters for a landing. Though his touch was a tad heavy, nobody had gotten swept away.

They make port, just close enough to Wall that Harry and Niall may make it back by Kendall's birthday on foot with the time they have left. 

“So,” Louis says, hands over a tube, crackling with a few bolts of lightning stores within it into Harry's hands, “there's the road that will lead you to Wall.”

Niall stares out from below where they are, and the land is great, hills of green and it's picturesque and makes him feel the slightest bit sad, for a reason he can't quite accept. 

“Good luck on your journey, Blondie,” Louis tells him, still in his Tommo voice, but his eyes are kind, smiling. “Wherever that may be.”

Niall smiles back, and he is very thankful, to have met such a lovely set of people. Quite an adventure. 

“Good luck to you, Harry, with your Kendall,” he turns to Harry, and they shake hands. 

“Thank you, Louis,” Harry calls him by his name, and Niall watches him freeze a little, but straighten up again, mean streak in his eye. “I mean-”

“We like Louis loads more than Tommo, anyway,” Cuddles speaks nonchalantly, and the rest of the crew makes jubilant sounds of agreement.

Louis stares at them, blinking, looking surprised and maybe the slightest bit emotional. He clears his throat, and Harry gives him a small smile. 

“You'll always be our Captain, Lou,” Liam says, and they all make a uniform  _ “Ayyy.” _

“You're a twat, but thank you,” Louis tells just Harry, comes in to hug him briefly. 

“Captain,” he says, smiles as he goes to climb down the ladder to where Niall's waiting by the edge of the port.

“Oh, Harry, hold on,” he stops him, and leans in to murmur something in his ear. 

Niall waits, watches them curiously, all the more so when Harry looks at Louis with a surprised, sort of pensive look on his face. 

“Just think about it,” he says, shrugging a bit at his confused face, waving him off and Harry goes down the ladder, and they're off. 

“What did he say to you?” Niall asks when they're a ways off, looking up to see the ship taking sail from where they'd parked, taking to the skies and clouds. 

“Hmm?” Harry says, not having paid attention. “What did he say when?”

“Just then, when he whispered to you,” Niall says. 

“Oh, um,” Harry says, “No, um. He was just saying we should use the lightning to get you a Babylon candle. Barter for it, you know.”

“Oh, I see,” Niall nods, looking back at him as they trek up the road. 

They make good time, he supposes, and make it to the proper road after a bit of a walk. They travel comfortably in silence, enjoying the sun and the views, but they see a carriage coming along towards them, and Niall tries not to get his heart racing, quite sure that it's nothing, but Harry holds his hand, and. Pushes him into the bushes, and he lands rather painfully on his back, grunting And grunting again when Harry lands on top of him. 

“This payback? For that horrible dance?” Niall hisses at him, but Harry's eyes are bright when they look at him, the slightest bit scared, and he knows he's shining.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly, lowers his face down so he's more heard, or. “I just can't risk people seeing you, I don't trust anyone. They might hurt you.”

Niall looks at him, and he knows it's probably down to decency, but he can't quite help but feel touched, that Harry would go through these lengths to keep him safe, though the niggling thought that he's only here because he needs a present to give to this frankly awful sounding girl, well. And it also begs the question. 

“Aren't you tempted?” Niall asks him, and at the proximity, he's sure Harry's getting blinded by his light, but he doesn't look away from him. Keeps his eyes on Niall, intent, considering his question. 

“Tempted? By what?”

“Immortality?” he says, “let's say. Let's say it wasn't  _ my  _ heart. Not me, just a star you don't know.”

Harry blinks, smiles sadly. “You seriously think I could kill anyone?”

He beams, and laughs quietly, though Harry silences him with a smile, quiets him down gently. 

“And even if I could,” he starts off, considering. “Everlasting life? I imagine it would be kind of, kind of lonely.”

Niall stops laughing, stops smiling, and. It's quite true, and it saddens him. He's got his brothers and sisters and Leigh up there, but it's not quite the same. He knows his glow diminishes, and Harry watches him carefully. 

“But. Maybe if you had someone to share it with,” he goes on. “Someone you love. Maybe then I'd do it.”

But Niall knows he wouldn't. His heart is too kind, and. He doesn't know, feeling very upset all of a sudden, and it must be noticeable, because Harry gets off of him and helps him stand, carriage long gone and they're on their way. 

They stay quiet for a bit, mostly for Niall's sake, and he's thankful, because he fears he might say something really very stupid if he chooses to now. After a while, though, he's feeling better. Still sad, but just a few more days, and he can go back to where he belongs. 

“You know, you sort of glitter, sometimes,” Harry says after they've passed through many hills, roads and the landscape doesn't seem to end. Just seems to be more to trek and more to cover. “I just, I just noticed it. Is it normal?”

“Really? Just now you're noticing?” Niall says, cackling at him. “Let's see if you can work it out for yourself. What do stars do?”

“Oh, uh, attract trouble?” he replies, and Niall stares at him, before shoving him with his shoulder. 

They laugh, and they keep going, further along, until they reach this marker of stone along the road. Weathered and the slightest bit unclear, but clear enough that they read,  _ ‘The Wall. 60 miles west.’ _

“How long will that take?” he asks, looking to him. Harry's long hair whips in the wind, and it suits him, really, makes him look more like the man Niall knows he is, and he waits as he contemplates the distance. 

“Maybe two days,” he concludes. 

“Well, we don't have two days,” Niall says. “Kendall's birthday is tomorrow.”

Harry blinks, and he has a strange look on his face that Niall can't quite read. “Yes it is,” he says, “You remembered.”

Niall swallows down the general combination of sad, jealous, angry and hurt down, and goes on ahead on the road, the crunch of the dirt behind him telling him Harry's following. 

They walk and walk and walk, cross a bridge, and they see a yellow caravan hauled by a few worn down horses, a woman of rather shabby appearance out at the front driving them. Her red hair fading quickly into gray, and a general worse for wear look about her. 

Harry pushes him under the bridge, out of sight and danger, of course, trying to shush him when Niall fights back. “I met her, you idiot. I met that woman, she's friends with Lou. He said that she trades at the market near Wall.”

“Really?” Harry says, begins to move all the same. “Friends with Louis, you sure?”

“Yes, yes,” he says, and Harry nods in turn, steps out of hiding and he follows. 

He steps in front of the caravan, and she halts to a stop, stares at him and only him. 

“Sorry, my name is Harry St-”

“That's my flower,” she says, her eyes widening as she points at him, at the glass flower snowdrop he's got tucked into the front breast pocket of his coat. “Over two decades I've been looking for that.”

Harry and Niall stare at her, not knowing what she's talking about, really, and Niall eyes the little bluebird chained up to the trailer’s front, chirping and looking at Harry up and down. 

“Give it to me,” the woman says, climbing out of her spot and approaching Harry with a murderous glint in her eyes. 

“How dare you,” Niall says. “That's a gift from his mother,” but she doesn't seem to hear him. Just goes straight for Harry and reaches her hands out, but Harry pulls out his sword. Shakily, but he stands his ground, looks at her seriously. 

She backs off, surprised, “Perhaps I was mistaken”

“It's alright,” he says, much too kindly, and offers a bargain to her. “It's obviously very valuable to you, so you can have in exchange for what I need. A Babylon candle.”

“And safe passage to the Wall-”

“A Babylon candle?” she makes a face at him, cutting Niall off. He frowns, but she goes on, “oh, no, no, no. I don't deal in black magic.”

“Really?” Harry looks at her doubtfully, but he recovers quickly enough. “Well, can you give us a lift, then? To the Wall?”

“Well,” she brightens, “why didn't you say so in the first place? Hmm, for that flower,” she points to it, then taps at her chin as she considers him, “I can offer you passage, food and lodging on the way.”

He considers her in turn, and says, “Safe passage?”

She widens her eyes, holds up her right hand. “I swear, you will arrive at the Wall in the exact same condition you're in now.”

Niall doesn't trust her, but it seems good enough for Harry, as he sheaths his sword and plucks the flower out of his pocket. Hands it over to her, and she traps it within her palm, sighing happily. 

“Do you have any idea what manner of thing it was that you had?” she asks him, smirk on her face. 

“Some kind of lucky charm?” Harry answers her, furrowing his eyebrows as he tries to remember. 

“Very lucky charm indeed,” she says. “Protection. In fact, the exact same thing that would have prevented me from doing this-”

She taps on his head once, and immediately, he begins to shrink, more and more. 

Niall steps back in shock, watches as Harry is turned into. Into a tiny little mouse. 

“Oh my god,” he says, shocked and worried to his bones. “What did you do?”

The woman, a witch, he now knows, doesn't pay him any mind. Just bends down to pick Harry up, and Niall tries to stop her. Tries to take Harry into his own hands instead, tries to push her away, tries anything. But he sees that he can't, his arms and his body repelled away, almost, as if there a barrier around the witch preventing him to come near her, preventing him to perceive him in any which way. 

“Go on, I'll keep my word,” she tells Harry condescendingly as she takes him into the caravan, “You shall not be harmed.”

Niall follows her in, standing by the curtain in the entrance and watches, searingly mad as she plops mouse Harry into a cage.

“There, food and lodging, just as I promised,” she says as she drops a few raisins into the cage alongside him. 

“Would I be correct in thinking that you could neither see nor hear me?” he bites out, and when she doesn't reply, obviously not having heard him, he goes on. “Well, then I'd like to tell you, aha. That you smell of pee, what else? You look lovely the wrong end of a dog, and I swear. If I don't get my Harry back as he was, I will be your personal poltergeist.”

She doesn't respond, as Niall had expected, and she walks out of the trailer and prepares the horses for travel, and they're off. 

Niall kneels before the cage, and looks at it sadly, worriedly. “Harry? If, God I'm talking to a  _ mouse,”  _ he moans, looking up to the heavens and hoping Leigh’s not watching this. “If you can understand me, look at me now.”

Harry, the mouse, doesn't. Twitches its little nose, and looks of to the side instead. 

Niall glances over to where he's facing, and sees the wheel of cheese hanging there, and his shoulders drop. He sighs, and crumbles out a large enough morsel, and pushes it through the bars of cage, which the mouse immediately grabs and begins nibbling at furiously. It's maddeningly adorable. 

He sighs again, and sits in front of him properly, and says, “You know when I said I knew little about love? Well, that wasn't true.”

Little mouse Harry doesn't quite respond, just stares at Niall before going back to his cheese, and he continues. 

“I've seen it,” he says. “Seen centuries and centuries of it.”

He pauses, and he smiles sadly. “It was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars and pain and lies. Hate. Made me want to turn away and never look down ever again. Many other stars did, you know.”

He looks again, and the mouse is twitching his nose again, and he rolls his eyes, gets him another little morsel of cheese. Continues, “But to see the way mankind loves. I mean, you could search the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful.”

Little mouse Harry finishes his bit of cheese, and stares at Niall as he speaks. He's not so sure he understands him, really, but. 

“So, yes,” he goes on. “I know love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable. And, well. Strangely easy to mistake for loathing.”

He can't quite help but laugh quietly, because he's talking to a mouse, confessing everything to a mouse, but he thinks he's got nothing to lose. Feels rather nice to be admitting everything so openly.

“What, what I'm trying to say, Harry, is,” he says, feels his heart just race in his chest and make him feel warm all over. “I think. I think I love you.”

The mouse doesn't do anything, and he hadn't expected it I, but he doesn't stop. “My heart, it feels like. My chest, it can barely contain it. Like, like it doesn't. Belong to me, anymore, like it belongs to you. And. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange. No gifts, no goods or. Demonstrations of devotion.” 

He pauses, and he feels incredibly, stupidly emotional. Can't quite keep it in. And he’s still talking to a bloody mouse, and he doesn't quite care anymore. Loves too much and. 

“Nothing but knowing you love me too,” he says fondly. “Just your heart, in exchange for mine.”

Harry doesn't do anything, nose twitching at him, and he's adorable, and Niall doesn't quite know if he'd prefer that he didn't understand anything he'd just told him or not. 

It's a rather uneventful ride otherwise. Many hours pass, and night’s fallen by the time the witch stops the caravan. 

Niall looks outside and sees that they're in the market town of Stormhold, just a bit away from the Wall, and it's quite a busy night, traders and townspeople on the streets. She pulls Harry out of the cage, and Niall climbs out before she closes the door, following her. 

“The Wall is one mile that way,” she whispers to him, and she sets him on the ground. “Though the walk might take a little longer than normal. Transformation tends to leave the brain a bit scrambled for a while.”

She points we finger at him, and Niall watches as Harry grows, grows back into his normal human form, though he looks rather out of it, shaky on his feet. 

“Wait,” he says, dazedly, brings out his sword, but he falls to the ground just as soon as he does so, out of it. 

“Harry!” he gets down to help him, and his eyes aren't quite there. 

“I warned you,” she says, laughing smugly. “Save your strength.”

“I've been so worried about you,” he says, cupping his face and trying to gage his condition. 

“Kendall,” he says, grinning dopily.

Niall's face drops and he has the most unpleasant sensation in his stomach. “I think I preferred ‘mother,’” he says, disgusted. 

He sighs, looks up and sees just a ways off,  _ ‘The Slaughtered Prince.’  _ He says exasperated, “Come on, there's an inn over there. Kendall's birthday’s not til tomorrow, could have a bath and a good night’s sleep before you present me to her.”

Harry giggles as Niall helps him up to his feet, then he groans, the scrambled brain getting to him as he's made to stand. Niall rolls his eyes, holds his waist and supports him as they walk towards the inn. 

Niall checks them in, and as soon as they get to their room, tries to help Harry take his clothes, but the most he can do is his coat and vest, before he just flops onto the bed, deep in sleep.

He sighs again, had never thought he'd sigh so much down here, and the bath beside the fire looks so inviting, so warm, and he'd like a bit of comfort, before. Before the next day.

He fixes the wall divider, and strips down to nothing. He closes his eyes as he climbs and sinks into the water, and just. Sits, and thinks for a few good hours, and hopes his stupid heart won't get the best of him. He'll do as asked of him, and. He'll go home, back to Leigh and the skies and shine as he's supposed to, though he know it's will be harder to do so, now that he knows this feeling.

“Excuse me-”

“Harry!” he turns his body away, blushing and his traitorous body glowing slightly when he sees Harry playing with the little hidden window in the divider, looking more relaxed and fresher and rested, his eyes bright. 

“I think you're in my bath,” he says, the laugh in his voice clear and wonderful. 

“Close your eyes,” he says, and he's not particularly shy, really, but. 

He laughs, and closes the door to the small window, “I'm sorry. I'm not looking, I promise. I'm not looking, here. I'll turn away.”

Niall hears him step away, and he tries to get his heart beating back at a normal rate. Breathes, and climbs out, and takes a towel laid out on the chair beside the tub and wraps it around his waist.

“Alright, you can open them now,” he says, running his fingers through his hair and walking to the small mirror, tries to make himself look less flushed. 

He feels Harry's eyes on him, observing him quietly, and he tries not to show that he's nervous.

“Did you really mean what you said in the caravan?” Harry asks him, and he feels his heart stop in his chest. 

He looks to him, and his face is set in a small smile, and he looks so genuine and Niall doesn't understand. 

“What I,” he starts, and. No. No, no, no, he couldn't have. “But, you were a mouse. You were a mouse! You wanted cheese, you didn't-”

It overwhelms him, and Harry looks on at him so affectionately and he can't. He hides his face in his hands and he feels so, so naked, and he doesn't understand. He heard everything.

“I asked you to give me a sign,” he says, voice muffled and he's so. Humiliated. 

Harry just comes closer, and he tries to turn away from him, but he just pulls him closer towards him, his hands warm on his skin and making him feel. Safe, protected.

“And risk you being too embarrassed to keep saying those lovely things,” he says, the smile clear in his voice. He laughs happily, and when he rests his forehead against Niall's, it warms him, calms him, and he laughs too. 

Harry kisses the top of his head softly, holding his face. When he looks at Niall, his eyes are full of life and warmth and. Love, but Niall doesn't want to get his hopes up, but he glows and shines anyway, his heart so happy. 

“You want to know what Louis really whispered to me that day?” he says gently, and Niall nods. Harry takes his hands from where they're covering his mouth, and holds them close. “He told me that my true love was right in front of my eyes. And he was right.”

Niall shines, shines bright and beams and he's so, so happy, and Harry pulls him in, kisses him and it's better than he'd even thought it would be, when he'd been up there and watching people do it for so many years. Better than being up in the sky. 

Harry's hands touch him everywhere, makes the towel around his hips fall to the ground and they both laugh for a reason. He doesn't know why they do, but then he's licking into his mouth on instinct and he just supposes it's because it's the way ey are. He wouldn't want it any other way. 

They laugh again, small sounds of happiness as they remove Harry's clothes, limbs flying everywhere hitting each other everywhere and they're not very graceful, but it's perfect all the same. 

They fall onto the bed, rolling over until Harry's hovering over him kissing and kissing him and staying close and he grinds his hips down. They both gasp, which turns quickly into moans when their cocks slide together, harder than they'd both expected.

“Sorry,” Harry mutters, cupping Niall's face as he kisses him again. “I. I don't know how - I've never. With another man.”

“I'm a star, fuck’s sake,” he says, and then they're laughing again. “You think I'd ever have the chance to this up in the heavens? And not really a man, so.”

“Better than,” Harry says, and his eyes are bright and excited and nervous and affectionate, so fond. “So much better.”

Niall swallows down his heart, and kisses him again, spreads his legs so Harry fits between them. 

They find a bit of oil, nothing terribly fancy, but it works all the same, when Harry takes their lengths in his hand, slippery and the hold is easy as he jerks them off together. Niall bites his lip, hands clutching on to Harry's shoulder, his neck, his arm, anywhere. His nails bite into his skin with every pull, and it's all so good, so much more than he'd ever expected. 

He wants more, all the same. Asks Harry, and he nods, though his nervousness is present in the way his shoulders set, the slight tremble of his hands as he gets them slick. 

“Harry?” he hums, waits until he's looking into Niall's eyes. “I'm pretty sure there's nothing worse you can do to me other than blackmailing me into being a birthday present.”

Harry blinks, and he groans, embarrassed and hides his face in Niall's neck. They snigger together, and Niall embraces him until it passes. He pulls back, and his face is soft, so full of care, and Niall kisses him gently, has to. 

“Just want it to be perfect,” he says gently. 

“And it will be,” he says, sure of it, and he kisses him again.

Harry's lips linger on his, just a moment longer, and his slicked up finger traces his rim, then slowly, slowly, he pushes it in, in and Niall winces. 

“I’m-”

“No, it's okay,” he says, and it is. Just the slightest bit uncomfortable, and Harry waits patiently until he's ready. Then, when he gives his okay, he moves his finger, pushing it in and out and it gets better, until it becomes amazing.

“Oh,  _ oh,”  _ Niall gasps, back arching as Harry's finger brushes against the nub of nerves, again and again. 

He asks for more, and Harry gives it to him, surer and he thrives off the sounds Niall's making. Two fingers then three fingers and then. 

He pours oil over his erection and Niall watches as he tugs himself off a few times, gets himself slippery and he wants it in him. It's a shocking thought, and he would blush, but Harry is kissing him again and he feels the head of his dick prodding at his hole. 

He pushes in, slow and his eyes stay on Niall, and it's a lot. But he lets Harry in willingly, and they wait, wait for him to adjust around his length, and the the discomfort turns into real pleasure, and it becomes worth it. 

Harry pulls back, slow, and just as Niall's arse winks around the lack of  _ something  _ in him, Harry fucks into him again, slightly harder, slightly faster. It's good, really good, and it becomes amazing when Harry manages to angle himself right and brush perfectly against the spot again. 

“Fuck,  _ fuck,”  _ Niall pants, back arching and he spreads his legs wider, and Harry builds up his pace, slow but sure and soon enough, he's pounding into Niall, fucking in and in and the cock in his arse, filling him up, it makes Niall feel terribly complete.

“So tight,” Harry breathes, and at Niall's request, he goes harder, drilling his cock into his hole and Niall didn't think he'd  _ feel  _ this much, that it would be this physical and he'd be so. Present. It's amazing, and it gets better when Harry says, “Want you in me, next time.”

“I'm trying to focus on getting off,” he says, tries to joke, but the words make him spurt a bit of precum on the tip of his very hard cock, and he's so interested, but first things first. “Can I,  _ shit,  _ can I go on top? I just-”

Harry doesn't even let him finish. Rolls them over gracelessly but in every fairness, he doesn't pull out, and Niall is blinking at the suddenness of the change of position and his readiness to do as he asks. It sends even more blood to his erection. 

He adjusts the slightest bit on his cock, gets his legs into a comfortable position, but the minimal movement is immediately effective, and Niall arches his back instinctively, moaning and clenching around Harry. 

“Fuck,” he pants, his hands pressing down on Harry's chest, nails digging into his skin, but judging by the sounds Harry’d been making, he didn't seem to mind that much. He's shining, knows he is, brighter than ever before and he sees Harry fighting to keep his eyes open, keep looking at him. 

“You can,  _ fuck,”  _ he moans as he leans forward a bit, feeling Harry go deeper into him. “You can close your eyes, I know I'm blinding you.”

“No,” Harry says, “I want to keep looking at you.”

Niall gasps, mainly because he'd rolled his hips and it felt amazing, but also because Harry was just too sweet and kind and he's a twat but he's amazing all the same. 

Harry sits up, kisses him fiercely as Niall gets used to riding him, and Niall pushes them both down, and holds on to the headboard in a tight grip as he circles his hips on his cock, taking him again and again.

They're breathing hard into each other’s mouths, in and out and eventually Niall's sitting back up, but keeps Harry down with his palms flat on his chest. He starts bouncing on his cock, riding him hard and pounding himself and he revels in the feeling, being full to the brim with no room for anything else but Harry's fantastic cock and shining and being allowed, encouraged even, to shine so brightly. 

It's not much longer. Harry sits up again, cups his bollocks for the briefest moment and it makes Niall moan and pant at how full and swollen they feel. It's when Harry traces a finger where he's splitting Niall open, just a touch of where his cock and Niall's arse meet, and he's gone.

He lets out a yell as he comes, spilling over their stomachs and chests and his whole body trembles with the force of it. Harry kisses him, hands anchoring him on his waist, and he's still so hard inside.

Niall pumps his hips, and it's painful and sensitive but not unbearably so, takes Harry in a few more times and. 

“Oh, Niall,  _ Niall!”  _ his voice is wrecked and on the verge of a pleasured sob and it's the highest praise. Niall feels his come within him, and it's a lot, feels it fill him up. 

They breathe together, catch their breaths for a minute or so, and Niall climbs off slowly. Feels Harry's come run out of his hole as he pulls out, and he actually does blush this time, at how much he loves it, and would love to see Harry do the same one day soon. 

Harry holds him close and gets them to lie on their sides. Kisses him and kisses him and holds him and he's glowing, just a slight shimmer now, but he's no less happy. 

He hums as Harry pulls the covers up over them, and. Amazingly, he's asleep. 

.

Zayn is not in the best of moods. Hair basically gone, skin sagging and hanging off of his bones, he's in desperate need of that star and he wants it now. 

The runes aren't telling good things. Nor are the entrails of the animals. 

He's close, a mile off from the gap in the Wall. But Wall is not part of his universe. If the star crosses that threshold into the human realm, his star will become nothing more than a pitted lump of metallic rock. 

He swears to himself, and magics the horses to go faster, faster. Must reach the market town before the star is lost. 

.

Harry wakes up quite early the next morning, Niall's arms wrapped around him, and he feels his breath fanning over the back of his neck, calm and gentle.

He turns over with a bit of difficulty, but he manages, and when he faces Niall, he's asleep, his entire body glowing gently in contentment in his slumber. He's beautiful, and Harry so deeply loves him. Looks at him, and knows where he belongs, and he knows what he has to do. 

He reaches down to the floor on his side of the bed, and pulls out his pocketknife from the pocket of his trousers. Combs through Niall's soft hair, and snips out a small tuft of it, and lays it on his handkerchief, folding it up and hiding it in his coat. 

He dresses silently, gathers his things and kisses Niall's cheek as he makes to leave. He doesn't wake, but hums lightly at the press of his lips, and Harry smiles softly at him. 

He goes down to the counter, and dings the bell once to alert the man on watch, who's been asleep on his chair. 

“What?” he rumbles, his head nodding to the side, but his eyes don't open. “What do you want?”

“Sorry,” he says, “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”

“Ask me again at a more reasonable hour,” he says gruffly, turning back to sleep. 

“No, I can't,” Harry says quickly before he nods off. “I have to go. Look, if my, if my friend wakes up before I get back, can you please give him a message?”

The man sighs, grunts before him, and says, “Go on.”

.

Niall shifts slightly on the bed, slowly waking, but his eyes stay closed as he revels in his sleep. 

“You know, that's the first time I've slept at night,” he says, tries to reach over and pull Harry closer, but the bed is empty next to him. He opens his eyes, and he's alone; feels the sheets next to him, and they're rather cold. 

He looks about him, and he's the only one in the room. Harry had left quite some time ago, he concludes, and the soft glow he'd been emitting diminishes. 

He dresses up, and goes down to the counter, thinking maybe someone might have seen where he'd gone off to. 

“Did you see my friend?” he asks the man sat on the chair behind the counter. 

“He left absurdly early,” he tells him.

“He left?” Niall repeats, confused.

“He told me to tell you he’s gone to see Kendall,” he says, “because he’s sorry, but he’s found his true love, and he wants to spend the rest of his life with them.”

Niall’s smile falls, and the light is sucked out of him. “Are you, are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Niall can’t quite believe it. He feels. Feels used and humiliated and. Heartbroken.

“Okay. Um, thank you,” he says, nodding, and he leaves, doesn’t know what else to do.

“Hey, hey wait!” someone calls out to him, and it’s a woman. Beautiful, brown hair full and curled the slightest bit on the ends, and she’s dressed in blue, setting up a little shop in front of the yellow caravan he knows all too well. Niall doesn’t know her, can't recall if he's ever seen her in his life, but she feels familiar, feels like he should know her. 

But he doesn’t stop. Keeps moving and walking and he looks towards the end of town, and he begins to walk, make his way to the Wall.

.

The walk back to his home is unsurprisingly uneventful, in this early hour. He makes good time, leaves the market and walks through the woods, and he sees the wall of Wall within a bit more than an hour. Crosses through the gap and Paul startles when he sees him, but Harry just smiles and nods at him in greeting, and the village is still asleep. Just a few people out and about, putting out the oil street lamps and he’s one of the few milling about the dirt streets.

He makes his way to Kendall’s house, and stands outside her window. Picks up a stone from the ground, goes to throw it, but just as he’s got his arm out, he thinks better of it. 

He drops the stone, and goes over to the front door instead. He waits, and a moment later, Kendall answers the door, still in her sleep things. She’s beautiful, always has been, but. There is a non genuine quality to it that he sees only now, and while it’s beauty all the same, it’s not the one he wants, anymore. Maybe never truly was, and he just didn’t know it.

She pauses at the door, stares and eyes him, up and down, shocked. 

“Happy birthday,” he greets her, small smile on his face. 

“Harry,” she says, still utterly surprised. She looks so impressed. “What happened to you?”

He pauses, and thinks about what to tell her. “I found the star.”

Her jaw drops. “I can’t believe you did it. Where’s my star? Can I see it?”

Harry nods, still smiling, and pulls out the handkerchief from within his coat and hands it over to her.

“Is it beautiful?” she asks him, and he can’t quite help but chuckle at that.

“Yes,” he replies. She stares at the folded up piece of fabric in her hand, and brings it up to her face, “It’s, um. It’s kinda small.”

“Well, that’s just a little piece,” he tells her. “A token for your birthday.”

“Well, then. Forget about the star,” she says, and she looks at him. “It’s not the star that I want. You know what I want.”

She steps closer to him, and snakes her arm over his shoulder. Her eyes are lowered, looking at his mouth, and she’s just got this look on her face.

“Yes, I do,” he tells her, and he dips her body, watches as she closes her eyes and puckers her lips slightly, waiting for his to touch hers, and he says, mouth inches from hers, “You want to grow up, and get over yourself.”

Her eyes snap open, confused, and he lets go of her, drops her to the ground unceremoniously. 

He hears something fall behind them, and turns to see Nicholas Grimshaw, fresh from Ipswich, probably, well-traveled man that he is, a great red box fallen on the ground beside him. 

“Nick,” he greets him, smile on his face.

“Styles,” he says in turn, and he pulls out his laughingly thin rapier out from his walking stick, brandishes it at him. “You must have a death wish.”

Harry smiles to himself, and unsheathes his own sword, the great, large one Louis had gifted him with, and twists it around easily. He would rather not fight, but if someone were to attack him willingly, well. 

“Ah,” Nick says lamely, but still trying to keep his dignity, and he slides his thin blade back into his stick.

Harry laughs, “Nick, it’s alright,” he says. He looks to where Kendall’s still sat on the ground, unfolding the hankie he’d given her. “She’s all yours. You really are the perfect couple, the best of luck to you both.”

“Well, why would I want this?” she asks him petulantly, and he frowns at her. “It’s just a pathetic handful of stardust!”

She throws the balled up handkerchief back at him, and he catches it, confused, because he’s quite sure that it’s not stardust. But he unfurls the fabric, and right there, where Niall’s soft golden hair had been: a small pile of black, glittering sand. He watches it as it falls to the ground, slipping through his fingers, and his heart stops in his chest.

“Niall,” he breathes, “He. He can’t cross the wall-”

He leaves without another word, running as fast as he can, and his heart drops to his stomach at the thought of losing him. He can’t, can’t-

.

Niall keeps walking, walking sullenly and silently out of the market town and into the woods and he sees that wall soon enough. The one Leigh-Anne keeps talking and complaining about, and he thinks sadly, in just a bit, he’ll be back up there with her soon. 

The gap in the wall isn’t very big. Maybe six feet wide and the wall itself isn’t very tall in itself. A crude thing of rocks and boulders jammed together, keeping this world and that world separate. 

He approaches it, feeling nothing, or in the least, forcing himself to feel nothing, and manages to get on foot on the stones leading up to it when someone pulls him back by the arm.

“Stop!” he looks, wide eyed at the woman who’d stopped him. The woman in blue from the market, and he sees the yellow caravan. “If you go in there, you’ll die.”

“What?” Niall says, not understanding, but the sealed door of the caravan blasts open, the wood flying out from its hinges, and the awful old witch with dying red hair is livid. 

“If you set foot on human soil, you’ll turn to rock,” the woman tells him, and then the witch pulls on a chain, and she’s dragged to the ground, the chain attached to her ankle pulling her back as she screams. 

“Wretched slattern!” the witch snarls at her. “Where have you taken me?”

Another carriage, of handsome horses and a great coach comes up then, and the door opens. Reveals another witch, a male who’d surely been handsome in his full power, but now, aged and awful headpiece on his head, hiding rotting hair, skin sagging and wrinkled. 

Niall realizes, says on an exhale, “Veronica.”

“It’s Zayn, really. Planning to enter Wall, were you?” he says, laughing. “If death is what you wish, mate, I’d be more than happy to assist you.”

“Are you talking to me?” the other witch says, her hands gripping her slave girl tightly as she stares at Zayn.

“Ah, Sal. Small world,” he says, grinning maniacally. “Anyhow, no, I wasn’t. I was talking to the star.”

“What star?” Sal snarls at him, and Zayn brushes his hand on the stone Niall’s got around his neck, making him flinch. “My slave girl’s no star,” she assumes he’d been talking about the woman in blue. “Any fool can see that. If she was, I’d have had the heart out of her chest a long time ago trust me.”

“Trust you? Not a mistake I’d be likely to make again,” he says, rolling his eyes at her. “What’s it to be, Ditchwater Sal? Heads, or tails?”

The skies darken overhead, and clouds block the sun, and it's bitingly cold. 

Zayn raises his arm, and from his finger, a blast of green light fires at Sal, who holds up both of her hands in from to try and repel his enchantment, though the shield she's formed around herself is weak. 

Niall staggers, watches as the witches duel with one another, and the kind woman holds him close. He glances at the gap, sees a rather large, burly man, staring wide-eyed at it all. 

It doesn't take very long, and Ditchwater Sal is soon overpowered. Zayn's blast of green takes her head, makes it vanish into thin air, and the headless body runs around crazily before it slams against the wall, falls, and burns up instantly and leaves a singed, darkened burn on the grass in the shape of a headless woman. 

Zayn laughs all the while, and when Niall and the woman look down, and the chain around her ankle vanishes as well. She's free, but Niall swallows painfully, not for long, it seems. 

“Alright,” Zayn says as his laughter dies, and when they look towards him, they're shocked to see him looking to have aged even more, almost unrecognizable. “Time to go.”

“He's not going anywhere,” she says, keeps Niall close. 

“And neither are you,” another voice says, and a man, seei close to the woman's age comes riding in on a horse. His eyes are dark, noise pointed and his medium length hair curled at the bottom and he disembarks the horse deftly. Niall knows who he is immediately, and it looks as if she does as well.

“Septimus,” she says, her eyes wide as she looks at him. Niall stares at her, and he realizes who she is. Realizes how stupid he was to not have recognized her, or the witch that enslaved her, the same missing princess he'd been watching for all her life. 

The man glances to her when he hears his name, and his eyes widen as well. “Anne.”

“I really do not need more nonsense today, mate,” Zayn says shortly, and he starts throwing spells at him, but Septimus is quick on his feet, dodges every one, and pulls out his sword. 

Anne pulls on Niall's hand, and they try to make off to the caravan, but Zayn blows it up easily with a flick of his wrist, and they fall back on the ground from the force of it. 

Niall holds her close, tries to keep her safe away from the duel her brother and the witch were having, and he watches in horror as it ends cruelly, when Zayn gets a great glass knife, similar to the one he'd tried to kill Niall with, and stabs Septimus in the chest. His eyes widen, as if surprised, and in a final act of bravery or to show the last bit of fight in him, he brings his own sword down on the blade, and it smashes into many million pieces.

“Oh, fuck,” Zayn sighs, looking at the bladeless handle of his knife, and he stares at Septimus on the ground where he had fallen. “That was my last knife.”

“No, no, no,” Anne whispers, getting to her feet and running towards her brother. “No, Septimus-”

Niall follows her, and he touches the wound on his chest lightly. It's in no way curable, and he watches painfully as Anne holds him as he dies. 

“Alright, I need to bring you to my castle to kill you there instead,” Zayn says, magicking the door to the carriage open. “Let's get moving.”

“He's not going anywhere,” she says, her voice harder now as she speaks to him. She's not crying, but her eyes shine with her grief, and she holds Niall's hand in a from grip.

“I think you'll find he is,” he says lightly. “It's alright, you can come too. You can ride in the carriage, or be dragged behind it, your choice.”

They stare at each other, and Anne squeezes his hand. She makes him feel safe, and he can't quite imagine why, and she shields him as they're forced to go in. Zayn shuts the door on them, gasps at his awful reflection, before sighing and climbs on to the driver’s seat out front, and casts the horses to move back to his isolated mansion. 

.

Harry runs, runs and runs and he makes it to the wall, where Paul is frantically gathering his things. 

“What happened?” he asks, and Paul shakes his head, muttering to himself before he answers him. 

“Be my guest,” he says, gesturing to the gap, and Harry tries to look through, sees a fire on a massive pile of wood, a horse without his rider, a body of a man. “I quit, so many years I've stopped you lot from going out, when I should've been worrying about were those people from the other side.”

“Just tell me what happened!” he yells. 

“Oh, what happened, where to start?” Paul says, and he tells him everything he'd witnessed, and his heart stops in his chest. 

“No,” he breathes, then he shouts it again a moment later. Runs out of the gap and looks to the pile of wood, knows it to be the caravan, or what was left of it. He looks, searches through the rubble, and sees it. Plucks the glass snowdrop from the devastation and places it on his breast pocket, and he mounts the horse, and takes off in the direction of the tracks made by what had to be the witch’s carriage. 

.

“You're the princess,” Niall says, holding Anne's hand tightly, and she holds back just as hard. He wants the bit of comfort, and he doesn't know if talking will help anything, but he can't stay quiet, so he talks to her. “I've been watching over you my whole life.”

“Quite a life,” she says, smiling sadly. “But I've had moments. They've kept me sane all these years. Meeting that boy in the market-”

“Yeah,” he says, recalling the moment. Seen it up in the sky and he'd thought it to be so touching, that she'd feet this little bit of happiness even as a slave girl. “Whatever happened to him?”

“He went home, back to where he came from,” she says. “He was the father to my perfect baby boy. My greatest moment.”

“What happened to your baby?” he asks her, and she smiles at him.”

“You've met him,” she says. Niall blinks, thinks, and she tells him, “Knew it was him, the minute I saw the glass flower I'd given his father, just there on his coat pocket.”

Niall's eyes widen, and he doesn't believe it. “Harry? Harry's your son?”

“What? You don't think we look the slightest bit alike?” she says smartly, and now that Niall is really looking at her, he sees it. Their hair, dead ringers for one another. Her eyes, their similar youth and. 

“How come you never realized?” she asks him. “All that watching up there, you must have known.”

“I look over your world,” he tells her, the slightest bit ashamed. “But I don't always really  _ see.  _ I, many things just. They slip my mind.”

She hums, understanding, and she pushes back his hair and he thinks, thinks and hopes and wishes. 

“I fell in love with a prince,” he realizes a bit later on, and she laughs. 

“He got it better,” she says. “He fell in love with a star.”

.

Harry manages to track down the carriage, sees it as he urges the horse to go faster, faster, keeping himself hidden among the trees as the witch and the carriage take the main road, and he thinks on his feet. Keeps one hand on the reins, and his other hand reaches for the tube, and he releases the lightning, aims it and it hits Zayn squarely at the head. He's barely hurt at all, but it does distract him, and it causes the horses to go wild and go everywhere. 

Harry aims again, releases the last bit of lightning at the bolts keeping the horses attached to the carriage, and they run free, all on different directions, and he hears Zayn yell, jumping off and trying to magic them back, but they're too many, and Harry jumps off of his own, and runs out, bringing out his blade. His hands shake, and he's terrified, but his love is there, and he will do anything to protect him.

“You are  _ ruining _ my day, you fuck,” Zayn says as soon as he sees him, his eyes slits and he looks murderous. Harry tries to charge at him, but barely even scratches him as he swings his sword. 

Zayn scoffs, and tries to burn him with his flames of green, but a shield of sorts forms around Harry, the flames unable to touch him. He tries again, then again, tries every spell he knows will kill him instantly, but. Nothing seems to harm him. 

Harry knows it dawns upon him when he looks, finally sees the snowdrop on his front pocket, and he yells again, exasperated and agitated. 

So, Zayn just holds out his palms, gathers the wind in his hands, every gust in the air, and immediately, a blast, a force so strong, and Harry is thrown off and swept off his feet and he crashes into the carriage, rattling it breaking the glass in the windows and he almost makes it tip to its side. He falls to the ground, aching and painful all over, his sword nowhere to be seen, and he's alive, but he doesn't know for how much longer. 

.

The carriage shakes, and Niall holds on to Anne and covers her as the glass breaks and flies everywhere, and they're still shaking as he looks out the window. 

His heart races in his chest, and he feels himself glowing again, and he breathes, “Harry.”

“No,” Anne says, looks for herself and she trembles. “No, he - he's not. He doesn't stand a chance. He’ll be killed.”

Niall knows she's right, and he cannot let it happen. He thinks desperately quick, and he says, “Go to the woods-”

“No! I'm not leaving him-”

“I won't let anything happen to him,” he tells her, “I promise. But you need to go somewhere safe. I'll keep him safe. I promise you.”

She looks at him, and eventually, she nods, and she gathers him into a hug. He's surprised by it, but he hugs her all the same, and he knocks down the door on the other side, and urges her to run and keep running. He gets out of the other door, and Harry's still on the ground, rather dazed, and he helps him up to his feet. 

“N-Niall,” he says, eyes widening as he looks at him. “Niall, no. You have to run, he’ll kill you-”

“I'm not leaving you here,” he says firmly. He grazes his jaw with his finger, and the fear is in his eyes, but more than that. The love, shining in his eyes as he looks at Niall, and it's more than enough. 

Niall sees Zayn stirring, approaching them and picking up Harry's discarded sword, ready to kill them, and he won't let him touch Harry. 

“Hold me tight and close your eyes,” he says, pulling him in. 

“What's? Why?” he says, and he's looking at Zayn, but Niall tilts his head back towards him, and he kisses him chastely. 

“What do stars do?” he asks him, smiles and assures him, and he embraces Harry tightly, their bodies flush and he loves him so. 

Harry melts into his arms, almost a Pavlovian response to Niall being so near, and Niall doesn't expect him to answer, but he does a moment later. 

“You shine,” he says softly, and he tucks his face into Niall's neck, fitting there perfectly, and Niall does. 

He looks at Zayn, who approaches closer and closer, and he just beams, closes his eyes and his heart does his work for him. Beats and races to his happiness, and he glows, glows and gets brighter and his skin is light, blinding and he shines brighter than he's ever shine before, even when he was up there in the heavens. 

Harry stays still in his arms, but pulls him in closer, closer, and with every moment Niall just gets brighter and he's blinding, then. An incredible flash of light, so powerful, blasts from where they stand, blowing everything out of the way. Everything disintegrates around them. The carriage, the nearest line of trees, and Niall hears the faint yell of an old witch, his screams, and then. Nothing. 

He slows his heart, the glow in his skin dying, but he's so happy. He leans back, looks and sees that Zayn isn't anywhere to be found, and then he looks at Harry, kisses him until he opens his eyes again.

Harry blinks, blinks to get the brightness out, adjusting, and he stares at Niall in shock. “Why, why didn't you do that before?”

“I couldn't have done that without you,” he tells him, keeps him close. “No star can shine with broken heart. I thought I'd lost you.”

Harry looks at him in disbelief, and Niall tries to hold back his sob, his emotions. “I thought you'd left me. But, but you came back.”

“Of course I did,” Harry says, and he's crying openly, holding Niall's face in his hands. “I love you.”

Niall beams, unbelievably happy, and he begins shining again. Harry reels him in for another kiss, and another, and-

“You should have let me take your heart,” a voice says, and they pull apart, jumping at the unexpected presence, and an impossibly aged hag-like creature comes towards them. They realize with a start that it's Zayn, old beyond reason and he looks almost. Pitiful. 

Niall stands up straighter, and Lois at him defiantly, no longer afraid of him. “You're very lucky you aren't dead.”

Zayn stares at him, and the life looks just about gone from his eyes. “I will be soon,” he admits, and every movement is a great deal of labor for him. Niall would feel bad, but he  _ had  _ almost tried to eat his heart, and almost killed Harry, so. “But I have strength enough to tell you that you made an unwise choice.”

“I'm not afraid of you,” he says. “You will never harm any of my brothers and sisters, no witch or mortal or creature will ever harm another star ever again. I will make sure of it.”

Zayn breathes deeply, deeper still, and he tells them, “Then. You will make life for yourselves more difficult. And you, to give your heart to this,” he gestures to Harry dismissively. Niall grips his arms, keeps him close. Protects him. “He will just break it, like all men do.”

“I'm not like other men,” Harry says then, his eyes calm as he looks at Zayn. “And I'm certainly not anything like you.”

Zayn looks at him sharply, and. He leaves, his pace slow, and they watch as he keeps walking, walking until he is out of sight, and they breathe freely again. 

“Oh my goodness,” another voice says, and Harry jumps. Niall laughs quietly and kisses his cheek as Harry warily watches Anne approach them from her hiding spot in the woods. “You're safe, you're safe. Thank goodness.”

“You can trust her,” he says, and Harry observes her for a moment more. 

“You're the bluebird, from the caravan?” he says, and Anne laughs as she nods. 

“I'm also your mother,” she says lightly, and Harry stares at her, and in a late reaction, he squawks. He turns to look at Niall, who just smiles in turn, nodding. 

“Quite an adventure,” Niall breathes, and he laughs, shaking his head at everything that's happened. 

“All because of this stupid stone,” Harry says, laughing as he prods at the colorless jewel hanging from Niall's neck, which isn't so clear a moment later. Harry jumps back and they all stare as the stone colors slowly, clouds of red smoke filling it until it settles into the mineral, transforming into a great, perfect ruby. 

“What,” Harry says, and it's been quite a long day, a very long week. 

_ “Only he of royal blood can restore the ruby. And the one of you that does so shall be the new King of Stormhold,”  _ Niall says, repeating the last words of the King, and his eyes widen. He looks to Anne, who understands what he's saying immediately, and her own eyes grow wide as she realizes what he's saying. 

“I don't understand,” Harry says, looking between them. 

“The last surviving male of the Stormhold bloodline,” Anne says, and she looks so proud. “It's you Harry.”

He stares at the stone, and he gapes at them, shocked and dumbfounded.

“Well,” Niall breathes. “Well, you were completely right. You really aren't a shop boy.”

“A  _ king  _ is a bit much,” he breathes, and Niall kisses his cheek lovingly. 

.

Stormhold is  _ massive.  _

He feels maybe a bit ridiculous in his royal clothes, cream and ivory with gold details, and he'd been made to sit center stage, almost a million people out filling the stadium to overcapacity, to the stands, the many, many more waiting out on the streets to witness his coronation, to celebrate him. 

He squirms a bit in his throne, and he doesn't know what to expect, but Niall reaches out and holds his hand from the throne next to him, and royalty suits him so well. He's in robe of deep blue velvet, a simple crown of a gold band around his head, and he glows softly in the night, and he makes everything worth it. 

Niall points at the crowd, at the first few rows, and when Harry looks, it's Louis, Liam, Sophia, and the rest of the crew, looking rather funnily sharp in proper suits and hats and everything. He grins at them, pumping his fist, and they all give him a uniform  _ “Ayyy!” _

He looks a bit off to the side, and sees Kendall and Nick sat together, rather awkwardly, and now that he sees them together, they do look rather mismatched. She stares at Harry, a life that could have been, perhaps, if she had been less of a horrible person, and she tries to act cool. Looks at her nails, and her rather pathetic Ipswich engagement ring. 

Niall points again, and Harry watches as Louis looks back towards where Nick is, and clear as day, Nick winks at him, smirking slightly as he turns his attention back to the front, and Louis cackles smugly, cheeks a bit red. Kendall looks between them, utterly appalled, and she makes a face at her unfortunate destiny.

Niall and Harry laugh, and it feels a bit more real, a bit more where he's supposed to be. He doesn't know how to run a kingdom, but he'll do his best, because Niall believes he can. 

The bishop places his crown atop his head, and it's very heavy, much more than he had expected, and he's presented to the people as “King Harry of Stormhold.”

The people cheer, on their feet, and Harry beams at them all, tries to hide his nervousness, but when he holds out his hand, Niall slides his own into his palm, and grasps it tightly, doesn't let go. 

Anne comes forward then, and she's beautiful. Elegant and she hands over a simple box to Niall, and she tells them, “My gift to you. To you both.”

“Thank you,” Niall tells her for the both of them, and she smiles again, before walking off and back to Desmond, who waits for her patiently on the sides with the purest smile on his face. 

Niall opens the box carefully, and and laughs when he sees what's within. Shows Harry, and nestled in the soft pillow inside, a candle of black wax, waiting to be used. 

They both smile at each other, chuckling together, and they both know it won't be used for many, many more years. They're quite happy where they are now. 

.

_ They ruled for 80 years, but no man can live forever.  _

_ Except he who possesses the heart of a star. And Niall had given his to Harry completely.  _

_ When their children and grandchildren were grown, it was time to light the Babylon candle.  _

_ And they still live.  _

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post.](http://castlenarry.tumblr.com/post/145990534330/long-overdue-stardust-fic-for-2012niall)
> 
> I am [here!](http://www.castlenarry.tumblr.com)
> 
> And [ask me questions!](http://www.castlenarry.tumblr.com/ask)


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